


Magic in the Air Itself

by SinisterScribe



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-03 04:25:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2837882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinisterScribe/pseuds/SinisterScribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a Sheriff becomes selfish, Santa is drowned in coffee, wolves pounce, granny meddles, pantry doors have seen better days, honourary elves turn up, reindeer are ridden, Henry falls over a lot, hearts are bared and happy endings are had by all.  Set pre-S1 when Henry's about three and Regina's at her happiest...right?</p>
<p>I own nothing. So no suing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue - Due North

**Author's Note:**

> HAI GUYS!
> 
> Sorry for being so absent recently but college has just been CRAZY. Still, I'm off for two weeks so I maaaaaaaay actually get something meaningful done (and by meaningful I mean the next chapter of Heart and a Half, they're being stubborn bastards, it's not my fault).
> 
> This is just a short one, two or three chapters. A wee Christmas special as it were. I was going to do one last year but the it was too spoilery for Evil is Silent so you got H+aH instead and -holy shittles, Batman- has it been a year already?!
> 
> Anyways, on with the show.

**Prologue – Due North**

**_The Diner, Three Weeks Ago…_ **

 

Sheriff Graham Humbert sat at the bar of Granny’s and scowled into his coffee.

It was only the third of the month and the place was already festooned with more tinsel, glitter, plastic elves, Santas and reindeer than you could shake a stick at. Christmas ‘classics’ played on a teeth grinding loop, the people of the town were going madly headlong into the season of goodwill’s psychotic rush and the Sheriff had simply had it up to here.

And there was still three more whole weeks of this bullshit to endure. 

Graham picked up the free gingerbread man that had come with his coffee. It was decorated to look like Santa himself. 

Graham wilfully and maliciously put Santa head first into the coffee and held him under until his hat fell off and he must surely have drowned. 

God, he hated Christmas. 

“Yikes, Sheriff, who crapped in your cornflakes?” 

Graham lifted his head when Ruby smiled at him from the other side of the bar. She was dressed in a ludicrous Christmas sweater which he suspected lit up and already wore a red Santa hat on her head. She was also grinning like an idiot. 

“It’s nothing.” Graham fished what was left of Santa out of his coffee and glared at the ginger mush that had once been a perfectly good cup of coffee. 

“Uh-huh.” Ruby canted her elbow onto the bar and arched an eyebrow at him. “You just killed off Santa. On the lead up to Christmas. This does not –to me- speak of a season of goodwill for our good Sheriff.” 

“Well, maybe it’s a bit of a crappy time of year for me, eh?” Graham pushed his coffee away and Ruby automatically made him another from the pot.

This time holding the gingerbread man. She didn’t want a massacre on her hands.

“Why not? Tell Aunty Ruby all about it.” Ruby’s obdurate optimism dimmed down to a manageable seven and she looked willing to listen. 

“I just…don’t like Christmas.” Graham shrugged. “There’s not really anything else to it.” 

“What, like, never?” Ruby wrinkled her nose. “Not even when you were a little kid?” 

“Aye, I liked it then.” Graham allowed. 

“But not now?” 

“No. Not now.” Graham’s mood darkened a little more as he thought about having to endure another Christmas. 

Maybe he should start taking vacation time over the festive period. Disappear up to the lodge for a month or so. Spend his time roaming the forest and hills rather than the shops and bars to clean up after the madness that this month just seemed to breed left, right and centre. 

“So, when did it change? When did you stop liking it?” 

“I dunno. A couple of years ago, I guess. Just seemed…shitty all of a sudden.”

“A couple of years…would that be three years ago maybe?” 

Graham frowned at her and mulled it over. He shrugged and nodded. 

“Ah.” Ruby pulled a candy cane from somewhere, unwrapped it and stuck it in her mouth. She knew better than to offer him one.

“What?” Graham demanded. “How did you know three years?”

Ruby sucked on her candy cane and shrugged. 

“Ruby.” The Sheriff’s voice was low with a warning and she relented. 

“Regina adopted Henry three years ago. I guess you don’t get to go to her house and be humbug buddies anymore.” Ruby hunched her shoulders in a shrug and Graham’s jaw clenched. 

He could neither confirm nor deny the rumours of knocking hips with the Mayor, especially since Ruby had already put the coincidence together herself. 

It was true. Christmas had been –before Henry- a day of hedonism for Regina and himself. A day when they were both guaranteed to be off from work, a day where they didn’t have to justify not being seen in town and a day where they could laze around together. Enjoying one another and all the food and drink they could put away. 

That had all changed when Henry had come along. 

Graham didn’t resent the child for it, not really, he was little more than a baby. It wasn’t his fault that his mother was paranoid about her clandestine tryst with the Sheriff becoming public knowledge. With the arrival of Henry, Regina had become…well, she’d become a wonderful mother and had wanted to give Henry the absolute best of everything. 

Including a Christmas that did _not_ include her lover. 

Which had stung a lot harder than Graham had thought it might.

“Wow, not even a token denial?” Ruby released the candycane from her mouth with a pop. 

“You wouldn’t believe it anyway.” Graham reminded her and Ruby shrugged a shoulder. 

“True.” 

“Girl.” 

Ruby convulsively flinched when Granny just seemed to materialise in her blindspot. 

“Have ye not got work to do?” 

“Uh, I, yes?” Ruby snatched up the coffee pot and clutched it to her chest. “Bye, Sheriff.” She nearly squeaked and hurried away before Granny could decide that her season of goodwill had been and gone. 

Granny turned to Graham and braced both hands against the bar. Graham steeled himself against whatever vitriol was about to be levelled at him and relaxed a little when Granny simply studied him for a long moment. 

“It’s not like you to mope.” She finally spoke. 

“I’m not moping.” Graham frowned at her. 

“Ye look like someone kicked yer puppy.” Granny disagreed. “My point being, it’s not like you to just sit there and take it.” 

“Take what?” Graham raised his eyebrows. “Christmas? There’s not much I can do about an international holiday, Granny.” 

“But ye can do something to make yerself happier, no?” 

“Well, what would make me happier would be to be away from all this.” Graham waved about himself at the twinkling lights and decorations depicting all things festive. “And that’s not going to happen so I might as well have a bit of a mope about it.” 

“Bullshit.” Granny snorted and Graham’s brows rose. “This is the season for getting’ what ye want. So, what do ye really want?” 

“I told you, not to deal with this.” Graham pointed at the tiny Christmas tree that had been set up at the end of the bar. He’d been warring with himself over drop kicking it out the window for about seven minutes now. 

“Don’t even think about it.” Granny knew exactly which way his mind was going. She’d been right when she’d said he was a man of action and his depression was soon going to turn to destruction if he didn’t get a handle on it. 

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He lied and looked back at her. 

“Are ye sure there isn’t something else you’d like for Christmas?” Granny prodded. God, it was like pulling teeth. 

“Like what?” Graham frowned at her. 

“Like…” She was going to have to spell it out to him, wasn’t she? “Like someone to spend it with?” 

“The diner’s open on Christmas and I don’t fancy waiting tables on the joyful day either.” 

“Not US, ye dolt.” Granny harrumphed. Actually harrumphed. “With yer woman and her son.”

Granny was sure to keep things as oblique as she could. Neither of the couple would appreciate it being blabbed and Granny would like to at least have something of plausible deniability. She could do without the Mayor deciding that the diner really needed to be audited this coming year. 

And the next.

And the one after that too.

Graham was still for a long moment, considering denying that he had anything like a woman in his life and quickly realised it would be pointless. Granny wasn’t blind and her ears were pretty sharp. Considering he usually invited himself over to Regina’s during breakfast in the diner…she’d be a fool not to have picked up on it. 

Granny was no fool. 

“Not going to happen.” Graham bit out after a long moment. “Christmas is a family affair and I am not family.” 

“Horseshit.” Granny snorted. “You’re the closest thing to a father that boy has. He worships you.”

“His mother doesn’t see it that way.”

“Really? She told you that?” Granny scowled and it only deepened when Graham shrugged. 

“She didn’t have to. She was over the moon to have Henry, when she’s with him, he’s her entire world.” Graham paused for a moment and smiled a little. He didn’t begrudge her that at all. How could he wish for her to be less happy…even if he wasn’t the source of it. He shrugged. “I’d just be in the way.” 

“So…let me see if I’m lookin’ at this straight, you disinvited yerself because you thought she didn’t want ye there?” 

“I doubt she even notices I’m not. Christmas is the be all and end all for Henry right now. She’ll have her hands full with him and the cooking and presents and everything.” Graham hunched his shoulders again to cover the stab of loneliness that went through him.

“Ye know, pride usually comes _before_ the fall.” Granny shook her head. “And you two have already fallen for one another. Hard.” 

Graham snorted and shook his head, opening his mouth to deny that but Granny cut him off sharply. 

“Do ye really think she doesn’t miss ye?”

“If she did, she’d have said so. It’s not like her not to speak her mind, after all.” 

“Mebbe she doesn’t even know it herself.”

“Unlikely.” Graham shook his head, his mouth twisting.

Regina knew every inch of herself which was why she could be so difficult to deal with. She could never be knocked off kilter with a harsh comment or made to doubt herself with a compelling argument. She knew exactly what she felt and how deeply she felt it and she did not love Graham. Not really. 

They were good together. They fulfilled each other’s needs. They were both attractive, attracted and available. They worked. That was all. 

“She’s just spoiled.” 

Graham glared at her. 

There was just being with Regina because it was convenient and then there was taking exception when she was insulted. He saw no reason why he couldn’t do both.

“Don’t deny it. That girl gets whatever she wants and that includes you whenever she wants. If she’s as oblivious to your absence as you think she is, if she’s really that shallow, then she won’t notice if you take yourself away from all this for a while.” 

“I can’t go anywhere…” Graham shook his head but Granny cut him off. Again. 

“Sure ye can. Ye’ve got that lodge up in the hills. The snow’s deep but not impassable. Ye could hike up there and stay a spell. Not long, but long enough for her to miss ye if she’s going to.” 

“She’ll notice that I’m gone and then she’ll be pissed about it. I’m the Sheriff, I can’t just leave.” 

“Ye haven’t taken a holiday in years, I’d say yer due. Pack your things, we’ll cover.” 

“Oh, will ‘we’? Who ye planning on getting to take over as Sheriff? Leroy?” 

“Hopper could do it.”

“Hopper could not…” Graham started to laugh and stopped when Granny’s scowl deepened. 

“Ye know I’m right. Ye can’t carry on as things are. She either respects you or she doesn’t. Best to find out now and stop being miserable sooner rather than later. At least, if ye do this, ye’ll know.”

THAT got through to Graham and his teeth clipped shut on whatever argument he’d been about to make. 

Granny was right and –now that she’d said it- Graham realised that was exactly what bothered him about this time of year. 

It always reminded him of what he didn’t have and what he didn’t have was Regina. 

Usually he didn’t think much on it. He could be with her and pretend that it was enough but…but that was no longer the case. He wanted more. There was an empty, hollow, kind of feeling in his chest that was only soothed when he was near her and –if that was one sided- he’d really rather know and try and…what?

“And if I come back and she’s so pissed that she cuts things off completely?” He challenged Granny. 

“Then be a man, have some self-respect, and get over her.” Granny hunched a shoulder in a callous shrug and Graham scowled at her. Granny tilted her chin down and raised an eyebrow.

“What’s the matter, Sheriff? Scared?” 

“No.” Graham gritted. 

“Then what’s stoppin’ ye?”

“Nothing.” Graham snapped and slipped off the stool. He shrugged his jacket onto his shoulders. “I just need to find Archie and get him to cover for me.” 

“Already done.” Granny smirked when Graham faltered at that. 

“How long have you been planning this?”

“Since I heard the wee one ask her where his daddy was. Never seen her look so terrified in my life. Her, I can take or leave, but the little one…well, I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for him. He deserves a daddy and you’re all she’s got. Best be seein’ if ye’re up to the task, hmm?” 

Graham just looked at her for a long moment and then grunted in the back of his throat. 

“I’ll have the satellite phone with me. Call if I need to come back sooner.”

“Sooner than when?” 

Graham mulled it over, wrapping his scarf around his neck, he smirked. 

“Christmas eve.” He grinned. “I’ve got to give her at least a chance to invite me over. Then I’ll really know. Don’t rush to tell her that though.” 

Granny smirked. 

“Never even crossed my mind.”

 

_**North…** _

 

Graham tromped through the snow, his breath steaming from his nose. It was freezing, the temperature dropping fast as the sun lowered in the sky. The snow was up past his knees and drifting feet deep against the trees. Snow was already thick on his shoulders and his head as it fell in fat flakes from the sky but…he was smiling. 

Graham inhaled the rich scent of pine and glanced up around himself, absorbing the simple scenery of the forest. Birds called to one another, a fox barked in the distance, deer bounded away, white rumps flashing. 

Graham stilled for half a step when the low howl of a wolf rolled up from within the trees not so far off. He frowned for a moment, he hadn’t known wolves ventured this far East…or so close to town. 

Odd. 

Graham hoisted his pack higher against his back and mulled it over. 

He didn’t have a gun with him. He’d been under the impression that there were no large predators he needed to worry about. Not this close to town.

In the Spring or Summer, the cabin wasn’t that far off. He could walk the distance from Granny’s to the cabin in a couple of hours. 

Though in the snow, that time was significantly lengthened. He was a little over two hours away from the cabin by his measure and, well, if there were wolves about, he’d probably want to quicken his pace. 

He hoisted his pack up again and tightened the straps over his shoulder. He knew better than to try and outrun a wolf but if he came face to face with one, he wanted to be more mobile in the hope of shinning up a tree. His pack wasn’t heavy. His provisions were meagre, he was more than capable of fending for himself and living off the land. He had a bow and some arrows at the cabin, he preferred to give the animals he had to hunt a leveller playing field. 

Graham frowned and looked turned to look back the way he had come. He saw his footprints tracking through the snow, rapidly filling in as the weather seemed to worsen in the grey light.

He briefly considered going back. 

Only for half a moment.

His smile, even in the cold, even with the threat of wolves, had never left his face since he had set out from his boxy little bungalow. He wanted to be up here.

Even if his only company was wolves. 

Graham revised that opinion when he turned back to head deeper into the forest and found not one wolf…but the entire pack. 

Five strong. Grey Wolves. All of them at least five feet from nose to tail, nearly a meter tall at the shoulder. Their eyes glinted amber in the dim light and steam plumed from their noses. They watched him, stock still, and Graham locked himself in place, refusing to move. He didn’t look away, didn’t dare, he was incredibly aware of how woefully outgunned he was. 

Grey Wolves weighed in at about sixty kilos, could run at about 50 miles an hour at a sprint and chase him for days at an easy twenty mile an hour lope. They had thirty teeth including gripping canines, slicing incisors and shredding carnassials. 

They’d eat him right down to the bones and not even pause to pick their teeth with the shattered ivory that was left. 

Graham huffed out a breath and wondered where the hell he had picked up all this stuff about wolves. 

He guessed a sudden clarity came with being confronted with a many toothed death and he must be able to remember every single discovery channel documentary he’d ever watched in his entire life. 

The big male, the alpha male, prowled forward. He stalked down off the rise he’d been standing on, sinking into the snow up to his chest but that didn’t seem to slow him at all. He pushed through the snow towards Graham and Graham refused to back down. 

If he ran, they’d chase, then he’d die. 

The wolf was silver, prowling towards him slowly, whorls of grey streaking over his coat. His pointed ears trained on Graham, his red tongue lapping over his lips once and –when he got close enough- Graham could count all those biting canines and gripping incisors. 

Graham was trembling and it had nothing to do with the cold. His hindbrain was screaming at him to run and it was a conscious effort on his part to stay exactly where he was. He had a scant chance of survival and that was to stare down the wolf and hoped they left him alone. 

Some hope. 

The silver wolf’s jaws parted, a low rumbling growl rolling from deep within his chest.

With a thunderous bark, the wolf pounced. 

Graham threw himself backwards, hoping to get out of the way but not turn his back on them. Never turn his back because that was what prey did. Prey ran and he didn’t fancy being on the dinner menu. 

So Graham hurled himself backwards with all the strength he could muster from a standing start.

It wasn’t far enough.


	2. Chapter 1 - Let it Snow

**Chapter 1 – Let it Snow**

 

_**Christmas Eve’s Eve…** _

 

“Today, mommy?” Henry bounded along the sidewalk beside his mother. “Will he be back today? Is it today?” 

Regina let loose a sigh and tried not to show how irritable she was with this line of questioning. 

Considering she’d had to endure it for the past three weeks, she thought she was doing remarkably well not having just killed the next person that asked her where the Sheriff was. 

Henry, of course, had more of her patience than anyone else could lay claim to but he was by far the worst offender. She’d had no idea that Henry had noticed Graham so much whenever he had come around to the house or she’d seen him in the diner or on the street or wherever…but he had. 

Her little boy could recite when and where she usually met with Graham and he had been incredibly vocally disappointed whenever their weekly routine brought them to said time and place and the good Sheriff was conspicuously absent.

It had taken Regina all of a day to realise that Graham hadn’t shown his face as he usually did. She’d been so caught up in the Christmas fervour, however, that she had assumed that she was simply missing him. It wasn’t until she had called his cell and listened to the answerphone message proclaiming him to be gone for the foreseeable that she’d realised that she wanted him where she could see him. 

Of course, she did what she always did, she went for his heart. She’d had it in her palm and close to her lips before her brain had decided to finally kick in and point out that there was only one place that Graham would go. 

His hunting lodge. 

Not that he ever did much hunting up there. He preferred to have it as a base of operations whilst he roamed the hills and wilds, reconnecting with whatever untameable part of himself that was buried deep beneath the curse. 

She didn’t like him being up there for that very reason.

The curse had never quite _stuck_ to Graham the way it had the others. He had a habit of remembering things that no one else did. Of picking up on little details. Remembering Henry’s birthday, remembering her birthday, remembering things that he could only have known back in the Enchanted Forest and not learned here. 

No, she didn’t like him being up at the lodge at all. 

Especially when –in December- the snow meant she couldn’t summon him back without him probably freezing to death before he made it two miles in this wretched weather.

It had taken Regina a week to get it out of Granny that the old crone even knew of Graham’s departure and that she also knew when he was coming back. 

Something she had _not_ been willing to share with Regina. 

She’d told Regina that Graham wanted it to be a surprise and left it at that. At least when Henry had asked, Granny had given him the precise answer of ‘soon’. 

Graham would be back ‘soon’. 

‘Soon’ was not a measurement of time that a three year old was overly familiar with and he had spent the last three weeks waiting for his mother to give him a definite answer on when ‘soon’ was. 

Regina was going to kill Granny. 

It was unfortunate, nobody could quite make her coffee the way she liked it, even after twenty odd years Ruby had never quite got the hang of it, but it was a sacrifice Regina was just going to have to make. 

She decided then and there that if Granny didn’t tell Regina when ‘soon’ was, she was going to crawl over that damn diner bar and throttle the old woman with her own skin. 

Regina let out a low growl to try and dispel some of her displeasure and then realised that Henry was still waiting on her answer. 

“I don’t know, honey.” Regina admitted and felt a pang go through her when he stopped bouncing along beside her and his face fell. 

“But why not?” He sounded so heartbroken that Regina stopped too rather than trying to hustle him along towards the diner and the warmth it represented.

She sank down on her heels, the tails of her long coat pooling over the snow and smiled for him. He just looked owlishly at her, evidently wanting to be sad, but summoned a smile for her in return. She was glad that she could at least cheer him up a little. 

She was going to kill Graham too. That was it. He’d made her little boy sad. Game over. 

Then again, if Graham never came back then she’d be stuck with questions about ‘soon’ for the rest of her unnatural life. 

“Maybe he will be.” Regina forced her smile to stay in place and she fussed with Henry’s scarf. “Maybe ‘soon’ is today.” 

“Why did he go away?” Henry had also asked this a hundred times and Regina had tried variations along the theme of work, vacation, midlife crisis (alright, not that one but she’d certainly felt like it) but no answer had seemed truly satisfying to him. 

“I don’t know.” She decided to try the truth for a change. “I don’t know either.” 

“But you know _everything._ ” Henry looked worried. “Is it ‘cause he doesn’t like us anymore?” 

“Of course not!” Regina answered before she could even think to lie. “Graham loves us.” 

She blinked at that. Oh hell, where had that come from?

“Really?!” Henry’s face lit up and Regina found she had absolutely no desire to take that happiness from him.

If she could lie to him about a jolly red Time Lord that zipped around the world and gave gifts to children for no good reason whatsoever (which made her suspicious, especially the myth about seeing everyone when they slept, never a good character trait in her book), then she could lie to him about a heartless man having affection for him. 

“Yes. Really.” Regina told him firmly and checked that he was securely bundled up in his coat. “He’s going to come back and –when he does- then you can ask him if he really likes you and he’ll say yes. Because he does.” 

Regina vowed to ensure that happened even if it involved commanding Graham via heart to do so. She had not done so in years, but she would if she had to. 

“I will!” Henry bounced up and down a little, his mittens flying from their strings up his sleeves. “Then he can be a daddy!”

“Uh…” Regina’s eyes went wide and she froze in the act of trying to get one of the tiny mittens onto Henry’s hand. 

“Come on! I bet soon is today!” Henry took to his heels and sprinted away in a spray of snow. 

“Henry, wait!” Regina lurched to her feet and gave chase. 

She slipped and slithered in the snow that never really seemed to clear in the winter months of Storybrooke and tried her best to match her son’s speed. Obviously bright red wellingtons had a better tread than her own leather boots did because Henry was already halfway down Main Street to Granny’s. 

Regina tore open her coat to give her legs the length of her full stride and hared after him. 

She swore, she was putting weights in those damn mittens of his. How did he ever get so _fast_?

Not very dignified for the Mayor to be sprinting down Main Street in the snow with her scarf trailing wildly behind her and her coat flying out like a cape but she cared exactly diddly for decorum right now. She had been amazed at what she would put up with now that she was a mother and dignity had been one of the first things she had learned to live without. 

A couple of years ago, she never would have considered answering a toy telephone in a town council meeting but she had fast learned, when a three year old hands you a telephone, you damn well answer it.

And so had all of the other council members.

Henry peeled in through the tiny yard of the diner, hurled himself up the steps and disappeared inside. 

Regina was only a few moments behind him and she threw herself up the stairs too. Just in time for Henry to come flying back out of the diner, his face crumpled in anguish, his voice filled with tears. 

“He’s not here!”

“Henry, wai- -!”

Regina didn’t get the chance to finish before Henry hurled himself off the top step, fully expecting her to catch him. Unfortunately for them both, Regina only had one foot on the stairs at that point and was absolutely nowhere near the handrail to save them when his impact to her chest knocked her flying backwards. 

Regina sucked in a surprised breath, kicked clean off her feet by Henry throwing himself into her arms. She held him tightly and braced herself for the fall. At least she would cushion him against the impact. 

It never happened. 

Regina squeaked in surprise when she collided with something warm and hard rather than the cold ground and a pair of strong arms came around her and Henry both, a masculine grunt sounding in her ear at the effort of catching some two hundred pounds of flying Mayor and child. 

The man spun with the momentum of catching them rather than try to stop them cold and whirled Regina back down to her feet, her head spinning and Henry cheering in her arms. 

It took her a reeling moment to realise why he was cheering and it had absolutely nothing to do with his mother being saved from cracking her skull open on the concrete outside a two bit diner. 

“Sheriff Graham! SHERIFF GRAHAM!” Henry squealed in delight and lurched from Regina’s arms towards Graham, wrapping both arms around the Sheriff’s neck and clinging tight. 

Regina blinked a few times, staring up at Graham, a million and one things racing through her head and all of them trying to get into some semblance of order before pouring out of her mouth. 

“God, are you guys okay?!” Ruby came skidding out of the diner, her face pale with worry. “We saw Henry go tearing out of here and hit you…Sheriff?” Ruby’s tirade was cut short when she recognised the man holding Henry in one arm and the Mayor in the other. 

“Mornin’, Ruby.” Graham grinned up at her and Ruby could understand why the Mayor was staring. 

Ruby knew he was taken. She was one of the few people that knew it for a fact in this town, but _damn_ did he ever suit being in the wilderness for a few weeks. 

He wore faded blue jeans and tan boots, suede gloves on his hands, a deep green scarf and a tan sheepskin coat. His hair was wild, looking as if it had been combed back with nothing more civilised than his fingers and he was rocking the beard with style. 

The poor Mayor looked completely poleaxed and Ruby could identify. 

“Sheriff Graham came back!” Henry twisted in Graham’s arms to shout to the entire diner. “He came back! Soon is today!”

“Uh…okay?” Ruby frowned, wondering if the little guy had hit his head. 

“We’re fine.” Graham smirked. 

Granny had been keeping him updated on the stewing of the Mayor for the past three weeks and he was glad that he’d decided to come back for Christmas because Granny had told him last night that Mount Mills was nearly ready to blow her top. If she had to see Henry’s disappointed little face when Graham wasn’t in the diner one more time…

So, Graham had risen before dawn and begun the hike back to Storybrooke. He had wanted to be waiting for Henry and Regina when they got to the diner for their mid-morning cocoa break but it looked like it was just as well he’d been a couple of minutes late. 

“Oh, we are, are we?” Regina recovered herself enough to remember that she was so mad at him. Never mind how delicious he looked or that she had just discovered that beards were a thing that she wanted dragged over every inch of her body. His in particular. 

“Hey, Henry, why don’t you go in with Ruby and order us all some hot chocolate?” 

“With cinamminonim?” Henry allowed himself to be passed over to the waitress. 

“All the trimmings.” Graham nodded. 

Henry wheeled back from being led away by Ruby with a terrified look of concern on his little face. 

“You won’t go away again?” 

Graham considered a moment and then grinned. 

“Only if your mum sends me away.” 

He could feel Regina’s glare at the back of his head and the exact instant she masked it when Henry turned to her. 

“You won’t, will you mommy?” 

“No.” Regina spoke in a brittle manner. “Of course not.”

“Okay.” Henry smiled again and let Ruby usher him inside to the warmth with a little disappointment on her face. 

She, and the rest of the town, had been watching this storm brewing for three whole weeks and now she was going to miss it because she was keeping Henry out of the blast radius. The Mayor had been getting wound tighter and tighter the entire time that the Sheriff was away and there had been bets on how close she was to cracking. 

Looked like today was the day. 

Mayor Mills was _furious._

Outside, Regina was proving Ruby right. 

“Where the HELL have you been?!” She hissed at Graham. 

“Away.” Graham looked down at her, drinking in the sight of her. 

He’d been more than a little terrorised when he’d seen her and Henry headed for such a nasty spill just as he’d walked through the alley between Granny’s and the ice cream shop. He’d never moved so fast in his life. He’d hurdled the fence in a single bound and snatched them both out of the air before he’d even known what he was about. 

“Away. Where?” Regina gritted. 

She was never more beautiful than when she was angry. A flush was high on her cheekbones, her eyes flashed and every irate breath plumed through the air with an angry steam. Her hair was wild from her short flight and she all but vibrated with anger.

“The cabin.” Graham smirked, knowing his oblique answers would drive her wild. 

“Why?” She was practically spitting nails. 

“I needed some time away from all this bullshit.” Graham waved vaguely up at the decorations and lights festooning every available surface. “I don’t much like Christmas.” 

“Since _when_?!” Regina seethed, on the verge of just taking her hand off his face after applying it with some speed. 

“Since I had to spend it alone.” He shrugged one broad shoulder and Regina bit her lip before she could stop herself. 

Oh god, it had been three weeks. Three weeks since he’d taken her and her knees felt weak at the prospect of him laying hands on her again. Especially with that beard. Where had her thing for beards even come from?! She shouldn’t like them, she didn’t, just, oh god, why wasn’t he kissing her?

Regina shook her head sharply to dispel such useless thoughts and struggled to remember her side of the argument. 

“So, to combat feelings of loneliness you went off into the wilds…alone?” 

“There’s a difference between being alone and being abandoned.” Graham tilted his head at her and stuffed those big hands that could be on her right this second into his pockets. 

Regina surfaced from thoughts of peeling him out of that coat with her teeth when his words filtered through. 

“What?” Regina floundered for a moment. She had known that he had remembered annual things like birthdays but she had thought that was programmed, a routine, like Christmas was a routine. She hadn’t thought that he felt anything about it. “What are you talking about?” 

“You really don’t know?” The twinkle of amusement in his pale eyes dimmed a little and Regina felt a pang at its loss.

The thing she liked most about her Huntsman in this world was that he never looked at her with hatred or contempt. That he gave the appearance of genuinely enjoying her company.  
This conversation was not going at all how she had thought it would. She had not counted on him being saddened by something that she had apparently done or not done, she hadn’t counted on the surge of want that had spear tackled her at having him so close again and she _certainly_ hadn’t counted on the beard. 

She’d been knocked for six and she was seriously struggling to keep rational thought going never mind employ her problem solving skills. 

“Ah. Well.” Graham gave a sad kind of smile and nodded to her. “No worries. I’ll be back to work tomorrow, Madam Mayor.” 

Regina’s stomach turned over when he stepped away from her and started up the steps to the diner door. She stared after him for a moment, confused and…hurt. Why was she hurt?

“You never work on Christmas day.” She blurted and he stopped at the top of the steps and turned to look down at her. He gave that lopsided smile that seemed so terribly sad and lifted one shoulder in a shrug. 

“I’ve got nowhere else to be.” 

And the penny drops. 

“You…!” Regina started forward, hesitated a step and then powered up the stairs to stand chest to chest with him. “You disappeared for three weeks because you weren’t going to spend Christmas with US?!”

“Well, I guess that answers that.” 

Regina made a frustrated sound when she could make no sense at all of this morning. She’d been blindsided by Henry’s wish for Graham to be his father, literally knocked off her feet only to be swept down onto them by Graham himself and now he was sad and she couldn’t quite figure out why and she was mad at him and it all just came pouring out. 

“Do you have any idea what it’s been like?!” She tried not to yell but she could feel her voice rising anyway. “Three weeks without a word, without a note, without a GOODBYE! You just up and left for no reason at all and blazed a trail up into the mountains with wolves and bears and poachers oh-my!” 

“There was a reason…” 

“You stopped turning up!” Regina thumped the heel of her hand into his chest, knocking him back a step. “Henry came into my life and you wanted nothing to do with him so you didn’t come! You wanted only part of me and decided to pick and choose which parts, what was I supposed to do? Have one Christmas with him and then another with you when you slunk in after he’d gone to bed?”

Graham opened his mouth, frowning, but Regina wasn’t done. 

“You could have died!” She thumped him with both hands this time, staggering him back two steps. 

She ignored how her eyes burned. The same way she ignored that she had checked his heart often to see if it was still beating. That it hadn’t gone cold and dark as it would have if he had died. She ignored how she’d slept with it cradled in her hand just in case something might happen in the night. She ignored how she’d woken up every morning, reaching for him and he wasn’t there.

She ignored how much it had hurt to know that –even under the curse- there was a limit to what he would take from her. That it had been and always would be purely physical between them. That her happy ending, that her family she had built for herself, would never be complete.

She ignored that what had hurt most of all was that she was beginning to believe her own lie and that she just couldn’t stop it. 

She cared for him, she admitted that much, but it was a lie. He couldn’t care for her in return. He couldn’t because he didn’t have a heart and Regina didn’t know if she had the strength to give it back to him. 

The hurt was horrible, so she focussed on the rage. The rage she could handle. The anger masked the hurt as it always had and it gave her some kind of respite. 

“You could have been dead in some hovel somewhere and none of us would have known! Henry would have spent the rest of his life wondering where you had gone and why you had left us and why you had never come back! He’d have been convinced that you didn’t like him. He _worships_ you and you can’t even be bothered to turn up for one dinner a year!”

“That is NOT true!” Graham suddenly loomed over her, a fierce scowl on his face. “I would have every single piece of you if you would only give it. I’d be there for every dinner if you would only bloody ask!”

Regina rocked back from him, her jaw clenched and something glittering in her eyes. 

He stilled when he realised how close she was to crying. 

He had _never_ seen her cry. Not even come close to it. She’d always been so internalised. Not distant, she couldn’t really be distant when she welcomed him into her bed most nights. That distance had never existed between them because there had always been a closeness there. An intimacy she shared with him and no one else. She might not say it but she showed it when she kissed him, when she tangled her fingers in his hair for no reason, when she would turn to him in the night and pull his arms around her.

“I will not beg.” She spoke very quietly, her voice rigidly controlled. “I will not beg for any man’s love. Not now and not ever.” 

“Regina…” Graham huffed out a breath. He had known this was going to be tough but he hadn’t ever meant to hurt her. 

“No. We’re going to go in there and we’re going to put on a good face for Henry and you’re going to assure him that you do in fact like him and then…we’re done.” She didn’t look at him as she spoke, stepping around him and opening the door to the diner, her face an emotionless mask. 

“Regina, wait!” Graham spun on his heel and gripped her by the belt of her coat, pulling her around to face him again. “I…” 

Something dangling over the doorway caught his eye and Graham stilled.

Regina followed his gaze upwards and her eyes snapped down to his, already shaking her head. 

“Don’t you da- -mmf!”

Graham’s hand tangled in her hair, he walked her back a step, pushing her right up against the doorframe, and his mouth came crashing down on hers. 

Regina’s eyes flew wide, her hands lifting to push him away from her, they were in front of everyone. Her hands came down on the front of his jacket, fisting in his scarf with half a mind to throttling him, but then he tilted her chin up and deepened the kiss and she forgot all about plans of murder. 

Regina made a very small sound, almost like a whimper, and surrendered to his kisses. As she did every damn time. Her hands slid up over his scarf and into his hair, his arms came around her waist, crushing her close to his chest and they kissed with a fury that she had never felt from him before. They’d been together in one form or another for thirty years and he had never kissed her like this. 

The catcalls and whistles finally filtered through to them and Graham drew away a little breaking the kiss but he still held her tightly, her feet nearly completely leaving the floor and her hands fisted in his scarf again. They were both breathing hard, staring deep into one another’s eyes and Graham realised that this was intimacy. Something they had never really had before, they’d come close but not quite at this level. 

It took him a long moment to realise that someone was pulling at the corner of his jacket. 

“Sheriff Graham! Sheriff Graham, why are you kissing mommy?” 

Graham looked down at Henry, the little tyke gripping his jacket in his tiny fist and a look of confusion on his face. 

“Uh…mistletoe?” Graham cleared his throat and glanced up at the diner. 

They were undeniably the centre of attention and he could feel Regina tremble with rage at his side. All in all, this had been a tough month for her and he guessed she was pretty close to just snapping.

“Oh.” Henry frowned. He looked a little hurt. “Not ‘cause you love her?” 

Graham’s brows rose and a smirk kicked at his mouth. Regina’s hand tightened on his arm in a silent warning. A warning for what he had no idea but Graham sank down onto his heels and smiled for Henry.

“That too.”

Regina made an odd sound as she stood over him.

“Oh. Good.” Henry grinned and leaned forward a little to confide in Graham. “’Cause I don’t think that just anybody should kiss mommy.” 

“Certainly not.” Graham nodded in utter seriousness.

“But I guess it’s okay if you do it.” Henry hunched his little shoulders in a shrug. “You do it alla time anyway.”

Graham turned his head to look up at Regina and found her staring at Henry like she had never seen him before. She also looked like she was strongly resisting the urge to clap her hand over his mouth and drag him out of the diner before he could air her entire personal life to the diner, and therefore the rest of the town, in one sitting.

“That’s true.” Graham turned back to Henry with a smile, not above stirring things up.

“Enough.” Regina didn’t raise her voice, she thought she’d done quite enough yelling, but it cut through the banter quite effectively. 

Henry’s eyes went wide when he recognised that tone. It was the voice of Mommy Means Business and that he had better stop whatever he was doing if he didn’t want to go without dessert or to the corner of her office to think about what he had done whilst she worked. 

The only problem was that Henry didn’t know what he had done wrong and worked quickly to cut her off before she could tell him. 

“Up.” Henry lifted his arms and spoke to Graham and the Sheriff, knowing that the boy offered an out, did as he was told. 

Graham gathered Henry in his arms and stood to his full height, tilting his head close to Henry’s and looking down at Regina. 

Some unreadable look passed over her face as she took in the scene they made and then her eyes narrowed. She knew she had been foxed but decided not to wreck their little charade. Not yet anyway. This was the happiest she had seen Henry in a long time and…it wasn’t in her to snatch that away from him. 

“Pick a table then.” She ordered them both and Graham quickly moved off to do just that before she decided that her patience wasn’t actually up to dealing with them all in her rattled state. 

Regina followed Graham at a more sedate pace and quelled the stares of the other patrons with a few well-placed glares. She might have been more irate had it not been only Henry and herself that would remember this whole escapade in a few days. Henry would be confused –which irritated her- but at least she wouldn’t have to put up with the embarrassment of the leers that her so public display of affection with Graham would earn her. 

Graham set Henry down on the floor by their chosen booth and helped the boy out of his several layers of coat, jumper, hat, scarf, mittens and –god- how did he even move in all this? He boosted Henry up onto the booth and removed his own coat and scarf, turning in time to see Regina’s eyes glitter when she caught sight of what he was wearing beneath it. 

A simple navy blue wifebeater sweater, the few buttons at his throat undone to reveal a couple of curls of chest hair. It was a bit tighter than he usually wore, clinging to his broad shoulders and arms, but he might just wear it more often if she looked at him like that. He doubted she was even aware of her tongue tracing over her lower lip in a suddenly ravenous movement. 

“Need some help, love?” Graham tilted his head at her when she simply stood there, making no move to remove her coat or scarf. 

She shook herself from whatever fantasy she was weaving around him and blinked rapidly. 

“I’m fine.” Her voice was stony as she tore her scarf away from her neck and tossed it down onto the bench opposite Henry. 

Graham quickly sat beside Henry, scooting the little boy along a bit and grinned up at Regina when she was forced to sit opposite them. Graham was not above hiding behind Henry in the slightest. The longer he put off her temper the more likely it was to cool. 

Regina narrowed her eyes but took the seat opposite them, she rolled back the sleeves of her thick woollen sweater and settled her elbows on the table. She laced her fingers together, looking at him over the top of her joined hands, and watched him intently. 

“Hot chocolates.” Ruby approached warily and set the mugs in front of everyone. A smaller one for Henry and handed Graham a phonebook. 

Graham looked at it, nonplussed for a moment and then remembered what he was supposed to do with it. He thumped it down onto the bench beside him between himself and Henry and then helped the little boy squirm up onto it so he could more easily see over the table.

“Hi, mommy.” Henry grinned over at her now that he could see her better and Regina offered him a smile though it lasted only a second. 

That didn’t matter, Henry was already absorbed in pulling his hot chocolate towards himself. Graham hurried to help him before he ended up wearing it. He looped his arms around Henry’s tiny frame, almost cuddling him, and helped him hold the cup and take a deep drink from it. 

Regina was less worried about Henry getting chocolate, cream and cinnamon all over himself than she was about what such a domestic sight did to her. 

Graham helping Henry, his arms wrapped around her son as if he’d been doing it for years. The way he laughed when Henry pulled back with whipped cream all over his mouth and a chocolate smile over his face. Graham helped him clean up a bit with some napkins and shook his head a little when it only got worse when Henry went back for seconds. 

_It’s all a lie_. Some venomous part of her whispered in the back of her head. 

He couldn’t really mean it. Not truly. He couldn’t love anyone, not whilst he didn’t have his heart. It was a lie. A wonderful lie, but a lie all the same. 

Still…Henry looked delighted and…so did Graham. They both looked so happy and Regina didn’t know what to do. 

Graham remembered too much. He would remember this day for months to come and –if she welcomed him to it, if she encouraged it- much longer than that. 

_And that would be such a terrible thing?_

Regina closed her eyes against the second voice. She hadn’t been drawn into a war with her better and worse natures for years. Not since Henry in fact. He’d made her life easier, turned it upside down for sure, but it had been easier to know what the right thing to do was. All she had to do was be a good mother, to give him everything he needed and to love him.

Did he need a father?

Regina’s eyes slid to Graham and it was truly the happiest she had ever seen him. Even without his heart he could evidently feel, feel with a depth and range she hadn’t thought possible. If he felt that for Henry…could he feel that for her too?

Regina closed her eyes and let loose a slow sigh. 

It was academic. She couldn’t give him his heart back. What if that broke the curse on him? What if he remembered who he was? She didn’t have the magic to control him here. He’d turn on her in an instant. Wrap his hands around her neck and choke the life from her. 

She couldn’t take the chance. Not with Henry in her life. She couldn’t take the chance that the Huntsman would return and that he would use Henry to hurt her. She couldn’t take the chance that her Huntsman would kill her and leave Henry alone. 

She was a mother now. She had to put Henry first.

No matter how much she might wish…well, when had her wishes ever counted for anything?

“So, what do you want for Christmas?” Graham was mopping the last of the hot chocolate from Henry’s face. 

“I asked mommy for a red truck. She said if I was good, I would get it at Christmas mornin’. I’ve been extra speshul good.”

“Wow, a red truck, that sounds great. What about Santa? Have you written to him?” 

“’Course.” Henry eyeballed Graham’s hot chocolate, wondering if he might be able to sneak a sip. He glanced at his mommy and found her watching him. Probably not.

“Well, what did you ask him for?” 

Henry looked suddenly up at Graham and then over at his mommy. He bit his lip and looked down at his red wellingtons under the table. 

“Henry?” 

Henry lifted his head, still chewing his lip, when his mommy asked for him. She sounded worried and he didn’t like that. He didn’t like when his mommy was scared for him. She was never scared of anything unless she was scared for him.

“We wrote your letter to Santa last week, remember? Do you not want to tell Graham what we wrote?” 

Henry hadn’t done much writing of course, he was just beginning to learn though –Regina noted with some pride- he had already mastered signing his name. Even if he did have a tendency to lose control of the N and let it zigzag a little too enthusiastically across the page. 

Still, she had sourced red card and a green envelope and a gold pen and she had helped him craft his little letter to Santa and they had walked to the letterbox in the snow to post it personally. 

Regina had no idea where the letters actually ended up after they got to the post office but it had been written and sent and Henry had been giddy with excitement the entire day. 

“I asked Santa for Scabble. To help me learn my letters and for the Lion King…and a cape.” 

“And lots of candy.” Regina smirked, knowing he was going to be on a sugar high for about a week but happily resigned to it. 

Christmas was an excuse for her to truly spoil Henry without indulging him too much and turning him into a brat. She figured once a year was alright. 

“And lotsa candy.” Henry echoed her with a nod. 

Graham tilted his head, smiling softly and absolutely sure that Regina had already bought everything on her little boy’s list and probably a great many things besides but…he knew something she didn’t. 

“And what about the other letter?” 

Henry’s eyes went wide and he looked suddenly alarmed. 

“Other letter?” Regina frowned and Henry’s wide eyes darted to hers with such terror as to nearly be comical. 

“The secret letter that you sent to Santa?” Graham urged Henry gently. “What was in that?”

Henry chewed his lip and looked at Regina. 

“It’s alright.” She assured him, wanting to cuddle him close and a little vexed that Graham and the table were in the way. “You can tell me. I won’t be angry.” 

Probably. 

“I asked…frm rrrindr.” Henry ducked his head and mumbled into his shirt. 

“Speak up, sweetheart. Don’t mumble.” Regina chided him gently and Henry straightened up. He sucked in a deep breath for bravery and it all tumbled out of him at once. 

“I asked Santa for a reindeer.” 

Regina’s brows rose and a smirk kicked her mouth. 

“A…reindeer?” 

“Not to keep!” Henry assured her earnestly. “Just…for a little while. To fly on. It doesn’t hafta be Rudolph or anything I just wanted…to pet one.”

Regina’s heart absolutely melted for him and she was torn that she hadn’t known sooner. She had no idea if she could get hold of a reindeer but she’d have certainly tried for her little boy. 

“Well…that’s a pretty big present.” Graham sat back on the bench and rubbed at his beard. “And Santa will need all of his reindeer tomorrow night to deliver all the presents to all the other kids all over the world.” 

“I know, I didn’t want to be selfish but…I really wanted to meet one.” Henry fidgeted with the little fork that had come with his hot chocolate (for eating the marshmallows, Granny’s hot chocolate was practically a food group). He frowned when something occurred to him. “How did you know about the other letter?” 

“Yes, how did you know?” Regina turned her gimlet attention on him and Graham just smirked at her. 

“A little elf told me.” 

“One of Santa’s elves?!” Henry nearly launched himself at Graham in his excitement. 

“Steady there.” Graham settled him back down on top of his phonebook. “And, sure, Santa and I go way back. We’re pals.”

“No way!” Henry gaped, eyes impossibly wide. 

“Way.” Graham shrugged a shoulder. “So, he told me about your reindeer idea and he wants me to help.” 

“You’re gonna help Santa?!” Henry squeaked and clapped his hands over his mouth in order to attempt to hold in his excitement. 

With mixed results. 

“Mommy, I’m getting a reindeer!” Henry launched himself across the table at her, his cocoa cup sent flying, and Regina caught him with more success than she had on the front steps of the diner. 

“Really?” Regina smiled at him and then levelled a fierce glare at Graham. “How interesting. I wonder how Graham is going to help Santa do that?” Her tone made it clear that there had better be a reindeer come Christmas morning for Henry’s disappointment would not be something that she would be pleased about. 

At all. 

“Magic.” Graham spread his hands on a smile and she narrowed her eyes at him. 

“A reindeer! A reindeer!” Henry bounced in her arms and then stopped just as suddenly. He looked over at Graham with wide eyes. “Will there be enough magic left for mommy’s present?” 

“My present?” Regina frowned. “You already made me one. Your handprint, remember? So I could hold your hand at work.” 

“No, mommy, your present from Saaanta.” Henry sighed at her as if she was being deliberately obtuse.

“Grown-ups don’t get presents from Santa.” Regina told him gently. 

“You ever think that’s ‘cause you never send him a list?” Henry raised his eyebrows at her in a ‘well?!’ expression and she worked her smirk down so that she didn’t give in to the urge to laugh at his precociousness.

“I guess I never thought of it that way.” Regina said after a moment. 

“I didn’t think so.” Henry nodded firmly, pleased at being proved right. “So I sended one for you.” 

“You _sent_ one for me.” Regina corrected him. 

“Uh-huh.” Henry beamed at her, glad she had caught on. He turned back to Graham, suddenly serious. “But only if there’s enough magic for mommy’s present. I don’t need a reindeer if there isn’t.” 

“This is Christmas, Henry,” Graham sipped from his cocoa and smirked at Regina, “there’s magic in the very air itself. Plenty for both presents.” 

Henry gave another squeak of delight and hugged Regina tighter about the neck, burying his face in her hair and inhaling the smell of her perfume happily.

“So, what is this other present?” Regina would like at least a little warning. Today had been trying enough as it was. 

“You can’t know, mommy!” Henry snapped upright and nearly head-butted her in the chin with his enthusiasm. Sometimes he was an absolute danger to be around. “It’s a surprise!”

“Ah, I see.” Regina nodded, displeased that she didn’t. 

Who on earth had aided and abetted her little boy’s Christmas machinations?

Regina’s jaw rocked to the side. Her money was on the crone behind the bar. She had been far too meddlesome of late.

She levelled a questioning look at Graham but he just shrugged his shoulders and sipped his cocoa, the picture of innocence. 

The fiend. 

“So,” Graham sat forward and brightly changed the subject, “what are we doing for the rest of the day?” 

“We?” Regina’s voice was stony but that completely bounced off Henry. 

“The park! The park!” Henry bounced again, jostling Regina and unsettling her. 

“Henry.” She warned him and he immediately quieted and moved on to wheedling. 

“Please, mommy. We can build snowmen and make angels and all kinds of stuffs.” 

“I _am_ an expert snowman builder extraordinaire.” Graham noted mildly and Regina glared at him again. Earning herself another infuriating smirk. 

“Really?!” Henry gaped at Graham. This was a whole other side to the Sheriff that Henry had never seen before. He was friends with Santa and everything!

“Santa taught me.” Graham nodded and Regina’s jaw clenched so hard it clicked. 

“Let’s go! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” Henry bounced again and Regina sighed in surrender. 

Fine. They had been planning to go to the park anyway and spending time with Graham meant she might be able to figure out how he planned to summon a reindeer and also what this other ‘present’ was that Henry seemed determined she have.

“Alright! Alright.” Regina huffed out a breath and lifted Henry over her lap to set him down onto the floor. “I give in. We’ll go to the park.”

“YAY!” Henry jumped up and down and eagerly hurried Graham into helping him into his coat and scarf and hat and even suffered having his mittens pulled on before he made a dash for the door to wait impatiently there. 

He hopped from one red booted foot to the other and groaned when the adults in his life were so _slow_. Did they not know there was only a little bit of day left and soon his mommy would make him go home because it was dark?!

Regina wound her scarf around her neck and shrugged her coat over her shoulders. She snagged Graham by the scarf when he made to pass her and hauled him around so they were chest to chest. 

She summarily ignored the little thrill that went through her at the proximity (three weeks, after all, she was only human) and the way her gaze betrayed her and dropped to his mouth. Her voice was low but there was a clear warning in her tone.

“There had better _be_ a reindeer come Christmas, Sheriff.” Regina smirked when he cleared his throat a little nervously. “If not, someone is getting a lot of coal in his stocking.” She tightened his scarf about his neck about eight inches to show she meant business and then spun away, stalking across the diner to join Henry. 

Graham hurriedly loosened his scarf so breathing was an option once more and huffed out a breath. 

Well, that had gone better than expected. 

No loss of limb, at least. 

Graham hurried after them, nodding at the wary thumbs up that Ruby offered him and her silently mouthed ‘good luck’. 

Something told him he was going to need it.

 

_**The Park…** _

 

Regina walked through the park at a more sedate pace than Henry and Graham set. She watched Henry tear around and top speed, snow flying everywhere, his mittens waving from his sleeves and falling over often. 

She wasn’t worried about him hurting himself, there was more than enough padding provided by the snow. At worst, he was going to have a chapped little nose but that was as bad as it was going to get. 

Graham scooped Henry up out of a snowdrift and set him onto his feet again. Henry cackled madly and took off at a dead run again. 

To fall flat on his face not three yards away. 

Graham stood for a moment, head tilted, trying to figure out the why of it, then strode over and hoisted Henry out of the snow again. 

The little boy giggled, legs already churning again before Graham even set him down and he took off again as soon as the Sheriff released him. He ran around yelling, his arms waving over his head and Graham just watched him, completely bemused. He looked down at Regina when she reached his side. 

“Why does he do that?” 

“You know, I haven’t the faintest idea.” Regina hunched her shoulders in a shrug. “He doesn’t seem to mind very much.”

“You don’t either.” Graham well knew that part of the reason that Henry had such an alarming lack of self-preservation was because Regina was always there to catch him or (in some cases) dodge him. 

Granny had likened it to how lion cubs never really fear anything because the lioness is always there to keep the terror at bay.

“This is part of my cunning plan. He’s been wired most of the week. If I let him run around like a mad thing here then he practically falls asleep in his dinner when I get him home. It’s that or spend most of the evening taking him back to bed because he still wants to play.” 

“Ah.” Graham nodded and mulled that over. “So…if he’s in bed early…I have you to myself for that much longer.” 

“Do you?” She arched a brow at him and he just grinned at her. 

“I do. I want to peel you out of your clothes as much as you do me, woman.” He loomed over her, grinning and letting his beard drag over her cheek as he spoke into her ear. She shivered. “I’ll be but a moment to run him ragged.”

“Henry!” Graham straightened called to the boy. Henry spun back to look at Graham, pushing his hat up out of his eyes, his little face flushed, breathing hard. 

“Yeah?” 

“What are you running from?” 

“Running from?” Henry frowned and Graham stalked closer. 

“You must be running from something. Is it…the Big Bad Wolf?” Graham prowled even closer.

“The Big…?” Henry bit his lip and looked about himself a little nervously. 

He hadn’t thought of that. There were lots of trees in the park that might hide a wolf. Even a giant one. 

“Mm-hmm.” Graham nodded and walked behind Henry, stooping and dipping his fingers quickly into the snow several times before the boy could see. “Look, there’s his paw prints.” 

Henry spun on his heel and gasped when he saw the prints that Graham had drawn as big as dinner plates in the snow. 

“Do you hear that?!” Graham turned suddenly away from Henry and let loose a low and chilling growl that made Henry squeal and dance around in excited terror. 

“The Big Bad Wolf is here!” Henry went running for Regina and gripped her hand but did not hide behind her as Graham had expected. 

Brave little tyke. 

Still, it would do him no good. The Big Bad Wolf was going to find him regardless. 

“Mommy, mommy, can you see him?!” Henry held her hand and jumped up and down excitedly. 

“I see him.” Regina never took her eyes from Graham. 

“Not Sheriff Graham! The Big Bad Wolf!” Henry jumped up and down again in his impatience. Honestly, did grownups know nothing?

“Look, Henry,” Regina scooped Henry up into her arms to sit on her hip, “the Big Bad Wolf is _in_ Graham.” 

Graham raised his eyebrows at that but quickly fell into character. He let loose another low growl and began to stalk towards them, sinking lower and lower to the ground until his fingers skimmed the snow in a mimicked wolf prowl.

“How’d that happen?!” Henry squeaked in alarm. 

“Not sure.” Regina shrugged. “Graham must have eaten him.” 

“What?!” Henry was somewhere between hysterical excitement and abject terror. His favourite place to be. 

“You’d better run.” Regina set him down onto the ground.

“What about you?” Henry calmed a little at the prospect of leaving his mother to face the Big Bad Sheriff all by herself and her heart melted for him. So brave.

“I’ll be fine. The Big Bad Wolf only eats grandmas and little children. I’m a mommy, in no danger at all.” 

“’Kay.” Henry nodded shortly. Perfectly logical as far as he was concerned.

Graham threw back his head suddenly and let loose a positively haunting howl that echoed across the entire park and even made Regina step back in surprise. 

Henry shrieked and took off in a turn of speed that put all other sprints that day to shame. 

Graham gave a growl that sounded a lot like a chuckle and chased after Henry in that same half crouching run that made him look like he was running on all fours. 

Henry fell over. 

He fell over a lot. 

So often that the Big Bad Sheriff had to stop and catch himself on his knees just to laugh. 

Still, he gave Henry a good chase, letting the boy run himself ragged and then pounced on him. 

Henry squealed in terrified happiness as he was scooped up off the ground and hurled into the air. 

Regina’s eyes went wide when Henry went airborne but she needn’t have worried. Graham fluidly caught the toddler and spun him around and around before taking him down into the snow to savage him with growls and tickles that had Henry squealing with laughter until he couldn’t breathe. 

Graham released him only then and sat back on his heels, chuckling to himself and letting Henry calm himself though he clutched his ribs and cackled madly for a good five minutes before he even realised the tickling was over.

Henry panted, sprawled on the snow and then lazily flopped his arms and legs to make a lopsided snow angel.

Graham laughed at him and then looked sideways over at Regina. 

She stood with her hands in her pockets and an indulgent smile on her face. She looked coiffed and calm, not a speck of snow on her other than on her boots and she only frowned when a sudden leering grin crossed Graham’s face. 

“Hey, Henry, let’s get mommy.” Graham crouched over Henry and whispered so only the boy could hear.

“Get her?” Henry sat up and looked over at his mother with a small frown. “But the Big Bad Wolf only chases little kids and grandmas.” 

“Ah, but the Big Bad Sheriff and his cub,” Graham put his hand on top of Henry’s head and wobbled him back and forth so he giggled, “they chase mommies.” 

“Really?”

“Really.” Graham hoisted Henry up out of the snow and onto his feet. He rose up off his knees himself into that half crouch again and began to prowl towards Regina. 

She frowned. 

An expression that intensified when Henry began to stalk her too. She had a sudden premonition as to where this was going. 

“No.” She held up her finger and began to back away. “Absolutely not. This coat is cashmere.” 

Her two predators prowled closer. 

“I mean it. No.” She tried to inject some steel into her voice but Graham ignored it and so did Henry following his example. “Don’t.”

Graham coiled himself ready to spring and chuckled when Regina broke and took to her heels. 

“Get her!” Graham hurled himself after Regina, who was making no effort at all to slow in deference to Henry’s much slower pace. 

She hared out onto the pristine new snow of the park field away from the path, sinking into it up to her knees in the drifts, but she didn’t let that stop her either. 

She was fast, she was very fast, and she was fit, but she was being chased by the Huntsman. 

Even if he didn’t remember that little factoid right now. 

“Gotchya!” 

Regina squeaked when Graham tackled her from behind and took them both down into a snowdrift, angling them so he landed beneath her and cushioned her fall but promptly flipped them as soon as they slid to a halt so he loomed over her. 

“Well, I hope you’re happy. My coat is ruined.” 

“Ecstatic.” Graham pressed an addling kiss to her lips and pulled away only when Henry came crashing into the little hollow they’d made. 

“Rargh!” Henry landed on Graham’s back, coughing the air from his lungs, and leaned over Graham’s side to grasp at Regina’s sides. “Tickles!”

Regina smirked but there wasn’t much to laugh at considering Henry’s fingers had little hope of doing anything through the several layers she wore. 

Graham, on the other hand, had much larger and stronger hands. 

Regina squealed a laugh when he added his fingers to the torment and Regina twisted helplessly under him and Henry both, laughing breathlessly and trying to find them both off with handfuls of snow flung in their direction. 

“Get off, you miscreants!” She yelled between laughing fits. “I can’t breathe!”

“Fine. Wolf kisses.” Graham stopped tickling her and promptly licked her on the chin. 

“Wolf cub kisses!” Henry joined in and licked her on the cheek. 

“Stop that!” Regina sputtered, trying to fend them both off and avoid the slobber on her face as both of them peppered her with kisses and licks. “You horrid beasts!”

“Uh…is everything okay?” 

All three of them went perfectly still in the snow and Graham and Henry slowly turned to see Ruby standing in the snow not far away from them. She had a red nose and rosy cheeks from the cold, her long scarf trailing from her and snow dusted up past her knees as she had waded out to them to see what the fuss was. Her arms were laden with shopping bags and she had a slight frown on her face when she realised that the Mayor had been pinned to the snow by her son and her…whatever Graham was to her.

There was a long moment of stillness and then Henry snapped. He just couldn’t take it anymore. 

“Big little wolf cub! Rargh!”

Ruby blinked when the toddler launched himself from Regina’s side and tore across the snow towards her. She watched his jumping approach and then realised belatedly what she was supposed to do. 

“Oh no!” Ruby dropped all her shopping bags and took to her heels, running away from Henry.

The little boy cackled madly and tore after her, leaping and bounding through the snow because he was just too little to run through it. Ruby trotted away from him, finding it much easier considering her legs were longer than he was tall. 

“I’ve created a monster.” Graham stood and pulled Regina to her feet. 

“Hmm.” Regina’s lips twitched and she began to chuckle. 

The Big Bad Wolf. 

The real, one hundred per cent, in the flesh, Big Bad Wolf was running away from a three year old. 

“What?” Graham frowned down at her. 

“Nothing.” Regina bent and scooped up two handfuls of snow, beginning to pack them together. 

“What are you doing?” 

Regina tilted her head, sighting Ruby, her lips pursed a little as she did calculations, patting her snowball into a firm and aerodynamic sphere. 

“Evening the odds.” Regina hauled back and let fly with the snowball. 

It flew through the air with more of a pelt than Graham had expected from his tiny woman and smacked Ruby hard in the back of the knee of the leg that supported her as she hopped through the snow pretending to have injured her leg so Henry might catch up. 

With a squeak, Ruby’s leg crumpled beneath her and she fell face first down into the snow. 

Regina threw back her head and laughed an honest and carefree laugh when Henry immediately launched on his downed prey and began to tickle her with about as much success as he had Regina. 

Still, Ruby put on a good show, squealing and begging for mercy as if she were being mauled. 

“That was mean.” Graham’s voice was low with a mild rebuke. 

“Meh.” Regina shrugged her shoulders and then shrieked when she was suddenly scooped up off her feet and into Graham’s arms. 

He held her shoulders in one arm and had her legs hooked over the other. He carried her effortlessly and started to wade through the snow. 

“Put me down, you miscreant!” Regina yelled but there was a laugh in her voice…until she realised where Graham was going. “Don’t you dare!”

“Meh.” Graham smirked and shrugged. 

Then he tossed her into the four foot snowdrift. 

Regina squeaked, disappearing beneath the snowline completely and Graham laughed, a deep and rich sound. 

Regina tried to stand and get out of the snow, but it was nearly as deep as she was tall and entirely undignified. Her feet slithered out from under her and she whooped as she fell back into the hollow she had already made. 

She lay there for a moment, watching her breath cloud over her in the air. 

“Well, I guess this is me until the thaw.” She muttered to herself but she was smiling. 

She was having a good time. She was cold and the melting snow had made her damp, her hair had to be all over the place and her nose was numb but…she was having a good time. 

“Come on, love.” Graham appeared over her, holding his hand out to her and she leaned up to grip his wrist. 

She grinned like a shark and he had time to realise he’d made a mistake before she gave a sudden tug, rolling onto her back, lifting one leg and planting her foot on his chest. He swung over her and –with a good heft of her leg- she sent him sailing over her head to plough face first into the snow behind her. 

He swore explosively but Regina was already wading out of the snowdrift with none of the trouble she had exhibited moments prior and running for Henry and Ruby who had stopped to watch the Sheriff and the Mayor play. 

“Run.” Regina ran over to them. 

“What?” 

“RUN!” Regina stooped, leaning down and scooping Henry up off the ground as she sprinted by, tucking him under her arm like an anorak wearing football, just as Graham came roaring out of the snow and gave chase. 

“Ack!” Ruby wasn’t sure if she was in his sights but she saw no reason to hang around and find out. 

Snatching up her shopping bags, Ruby spun on her heel and took off after Regina. For such a little woman and carrying a little boy half her size, the Mayor sure could put on a turn of speed when she wanted to.

Graham just sailed right on by Ruby, his long legs eating up the distance between him and the Mayor and Ruby slowed to a jog when she saw she was in no danger. 

Graham caught Regina and Henry both in his arms and swung them, shrieking with laughter, up into the air and spun them around. He was laughing too, tickling Henry and dragging his beard over Regina’s face, making her sputter and chuckle.

Ruby slowed to a halt, watching the little family and…

Little family. 

Ruby grinned. 

Looked like the Sheriff might get what he wanted this Christmas after all.

 

_**Bedtime…** _

 

Regina padded back into the living room, after having disappeared herself for half an hour to wrap presents, and stilled when she came across Graham and Henry. 

The television was on, some kind of Christmas themed cartoon playing in the background, but neither of her men were paying attention to it. 

Graham leaned back against the arm of the couch, his long legs stretched out over the length of it and Henry was sprawled spread eagled over Graham’s chest, his little face turned to the television but his eyes closed in sleep. 

She was actually surprised that he had lasted this long. She had expected him to yawn his way to bed as soon as they’d finished with bath time but he had insisted that he wasn’t tired and

Regina had decided to let it play out since he was so excitable about Graham being back from the lodge. 

Nothing to do with the way she wanted to see how Graham did with the more practical side of dealing with Henry. 

Nope. 

Not at all. 

The fact that Graham had risen to her challenge and then some was…a complication.

Henry had been on the verge of throwing a tantrum at one point, when she’d first told him that he had to go to bed, and it had been Graham that had put a very full stop to it. He’d told Henry on no uncertain terms that if he didn’t behave he’d be put to bed on top of the wardrobe where he couldn’t get down himself and left there until he could act like a big boy and behave. 

And that was it. 

Regina smirked at the memory of Henry’s shocked expression. He had obviously been expecting to get away with murder since Graham was technically their guest but…apparently not. 

Perhaps he wouldn’t be terrible at…Regina shook her head sharply and cut that thought off. 

It wasn’t real. He was going to forget.

He was going. To forget. 

She could pretend all she liked, but he didn’t love her. Not really. He thought he did, because of the curse and the way it had programmed him, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. Not really. Never really. He didn’t have his heart. She did. 

Regina heaved out a breath and leaned against the end of the couch, holding her cup of coffee in both hands and looking down at the picture her son and her Huntsman made. 

They were utterly adorable. 

Graham lay with his hand spanning Henry’s back protectively and Henry had his little fist bunched in the collar of Graham’s sweater and his Superted (the teddy bear she had gotten him for Christmas last year dressed as Superman) tucked securely under his other arm. They were both sound asleep. 

Cute, she believed, was the correct term. 

Regina just watched them for a long moment. Trying to absorb the sight so she could remember it exactly as it was just in case it all didn’t pan out. 

Just in case?

Regina frowned at herself. 

She wasn’t allowing this. Remember?

Honestly, had she been struck with part of the curse and doomed to be trapped in an eternal loop along with the rest of them?

_Might not be so bad? You’d be happy. You wouldn’t be torn over this being real._

Regina shut that voice down. Hard. Happiness was all well and good, but being trapped in the same amnesiac loop meant that she could never truly care for Henry or really love him as he grew and that she could not allow. He was not affected by the curse and never had been…

She didn’t know what to do if that ever became the case. 

The truth reared its head when the realisation of what she had really done when she had adopted Henry swam to the surface of her mind. 

He was getting older, getting smarter, soon he would begin to really notice. Notice that nobody changed, that nobody really remembered what was going on or anything of great import from one day to the next. When he went to school, he would begin to notice that none of the other children advanced the way he did. He’d have to make friends all over again at the start of every year. 

He’d be so lonely. 

Regina let loose a slow sigh and felt a sharp pang go through her when she realised there was nothing she could do. 

This curse had cast all of them and -in her desire for her own happiness- she had doomed her son to the same cyclical life she had. Of never being able to form lasting bonds. Never earning any friends, never…so many nevers. 

Regina had become a selfish and cruel thing when she had become the Evil Queen. She’d been hard and vindictive and wanted everything her own way because she had never had that before and when she had lost Daniel she’d had nothing else to lose. 

In the end, all she’d wanted was someone to love her and she had found Henry. 

Or he had found her. 

Therein the irony had truly begun to shine. 

She’d become less selfish. Henry had forced her to. She had to put him first. Had to keep him safe, had to look after him, had to put his comfort before hers. Every single time. She’d had to give up Graham and having him whenever she’d wanted. She had wanted Henry all to herself (that selfishness again) and she had allowed Graham to slink off and hide from Henry not realising how much it would make her ache in the long run. 

She was a mother now and mothers were supposed to put their children first. 

Regina had never had that and she had wanted Henry to have all of the things her mother had never let her have. A family that loved him, friends, freedom, love, a life.

It was somewhat horrifying to realise that she had snatched all that away from him without even trying. She might be less selfish but it had come back to bite her all the same.   
Regina closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath. 

She had time. Time to figure it out. Two years. Maybe three. She had that time of innocence left with him still. That time when he would still love her and think she was a good person. When he wouldn’t realise that she was broken. 

If he could believe in Santa for that long, he could believe in her. 

God, she loved Christmas. 

“Hey.” 

Regina’s eyes snapped open and she looked down at Graham’s quiet word. His eyes were open but he hadn’t moved otherwise so as not to disturb Henry. 

“You okay?” 

“Tired.” Regina forced a smile and nodded. 

She was further disconcerted at the lesser hold of the curse on Graham when he frowned and obviously saw clean through the lie. He considered pushing her, she could see it in his face, but he let it slide. They couldn’t very well have a domestic without rousing Henry. 

“Is it bedtime?” Graham sat up, carefully cradling Henry to his chest. 

“Long since past it.” She managed something of a more genuine smile. 

“Well, I think we should all find our pyjamas, hmm?” Graham rose smoothly to his feet, never once disturbing Henry and rounded the couch to stand beside her. “Show me?” 

Regina looked up at him for a long moment and a million and one thoughts raced through her head.

She should push him away. Send him home and wait for him to forget before she called on him again because there was being less selfish and there was needing the comfort he gave her. He touched her without flinching. Loved her (at least close enough to it to evidently fool her), held her close, gave the appearance of cherishing her. 

Henry loved her and it was real in that innocent way that children did everything but Graham’s affections were obviously different and something she craved all the same. 

Something she knew she couldn’t give up. 

Not yet. 

Perhaps not ever. 

“This way.” She set her coffee down onto coffee table and then turned to lead him up the stairs. 

He followed her in that silent padding way that not even the curse had trained out of him and she was aware of him behind her only because she had bid him to follow her. It should have been terrifying but he had been her shadow for so long that it was an odd comfort. 

Comforting until she realised an ever growing part of her wanted him out of her shadow and at her side. 

She scowled and shoved that away. She knew why she couldn’t have that. 

Now if only her heart would get with the program and let her be, everything would go a lot smoother.

Except she didn’t want smooth. 

Everything went smoothly in this damn looped town and she didn’t want it anymore. She hadn’t want it when she’d searched out Henry, hadn’t even wanted it when she’d first come here and met Owen and his father. 

It was a bitter realisation that left an acrid feeling in her to now know that she had never really wanted any of this. Regret battered at her from all sides. All she had ever wanted was someone to love her without it costing them both everything. 

Regina huffed out a breath and shoved a hand through her short hair, pushing open the door to Henry’s room and striding blind across it to snap on the bedside light. He didn’t like to sleep without it. She pulled back the covers and turned back to them. She half lifted her hands, wanting to take Henry back, in fierce need of a cuddle. 

The movement stalled when she saw Graham looking at Henry rather than her. He had a thoughtful expression on his face. Something about it that she had never seen before. He carefully combed Henry’s little cowlick back from his face and smirked when it stubbornly sprang back up again in an instant. He seemed to feel her regard and his eyes rose to hers, not a trace of guilt or embarrassment in him when she’d caught him at such an unguarded moment. Instead, he smiled and moved past her to lay Henry down onto his bed. 

The little boy grumbled at the sudden lack of Graham’s warmth but he didn’t wake and Regina swept the covers over him, moving to sit down on the side of the bed and tuck him in securely. She smiled down at his innocent little face. 

She had time. She had time yet.

“Sleep well, little prince.” She spoke softly and leaned down, kissing him on the forehead. 

One last tucking in and she rose, nearly yelping when she realised Graham was right behind her. Again, he wasn’t looking at her, he was looking at Henry. His arm slid around her waist though, pulling her to him, and he leaned down over the bed. He swept his finger down the length of Henry’s nose and smiled when the little boy scrunched up his face and lifted a hand to rub at his nose. 

“Goodnight, Henry.” Graham spoke just as softly as she had and Regina suddenly needed a little distance. 

She pulled from his loose hold and quickly left the room, gulping in a deep breath or three and trying to calm herself. 

Too much. Too damn much. This was going to cost her so dearly. Graham might not remember it come a few days but she would. 

She would feel the loss of it. Henry would be confused, he would be sad for a while, but he would get over it in time. 

Would she?

“Regina, love, what’s wrong?” 

“I…” Regina spun to look at him, watching him close the door over in Henry’s room but knowing not to shut it completely. 

He had been here often enough when Henry was in bed to know that the lad preferred it that way. 

She had to tell him to leave. She had to get him to go. This whole lie of Graham’s was for Henry’s sake after all. The afternoon in the park and the supposed reindeer and whatever the hell else he had planned. It was all for Henry. Not for her. She should get him to leave and try desperately to distance herself whilst he wasn’t standing there being so damn good with Henry and looking positively edible.

She should. She really should. 

“I’ll go. If you want me to.” Graham closed the distance between them, his hand finding her waist. “If you really want me to.” 

Regina looked up at him and opened her mouth to do just that. 

She closed it just as quickly and looked down. She couldn’t stand to look at those eyes that appeared to genuinely love her. Not when she knew he didn’t. She tilted forward, her forehead coming to rest against his chest, and sighed.

His arms immediately came around her, his chin resting on top of her head and damn her treacherous body when her arms slid around his waist too. She closed her eyes and turned her head, letting her cheek rest against the warm wall of his chest and listening to his heartbeat.

Not his _true_ heart of course. The lump of muscle in his chest was just meat and electrical impulses. A complex organ for sure but not the seat of all his emotions. Not the core that was him.

Still, the sound of it, the feel of the thump of it against her cheek comforted her. 

Even if it was a lie, it was a wonderful lie. 

“Do you want me to go? I have to know, love. I think we both have to know.” 

Regina tensed, so many things roaring through her at what should be a simple question. It should be the simplest question in the world. Did she want him? Did she really? It was a really simple fucking question. 

“No.” The answer seemed to just fall out of her in that heavy way the truth always did. “No, I don’t want you to go.” 

He seethed out a long breath and she knew he was smiling. She could feel it. His arms tightened about her, crushing her close to him for a moment, then he loosened his hold on her. She’d have to be able to breathe at some point after all. He opened his mouth to say something and then evidently changed his mind. She wasn’t ready for that yet. 

“Coffee?” 

She huffed a laugh and nodded, drawing away from him a little. 

“Coffee.” She nodded and turned, her fingers lacing through his and leading him back down the stairs. 

This time, he walked level with her. 

She let him go only when she went to the living room to retrieve her now cool cup of coffee and pad through to the kitchen with it. 

He followed close behind her and –when she arrived at the coffee machine to pour them both a cup- his hands came down around her hips and he drew her back a little to lean flush against him. His head bowed to her neck, pressing a kiss to the place where her neck met her shoulder and giving a soft nip of his teeth. 

She shivered. He had always been a biter and she had never bothered herself to train it out of him. His beard dragged against her skin and she hummed a low and pleased sound in her throat. It was actually quite soft, not prickly like she had imagined a beard might be, but sweeping smoothly over her skin like some kind of luxuriant fur. 

What would it feel like…lower?

“I thought you wanted coffee?” She turned her head to look at him and he raised his eyes to hers, giving her another nip on the neck. 

“Hmm, right, I forgot.” He straightened, standing very close to her, leaning in. 

“Forgot?” She breathed against him and his lips ghosted over hers when he spoke he was so close. 

“You’re very distracting.” He turned her slowly with his hands on her waist. He bent again, kissing his way up her neck. “All I can think of is how I want to be on you, under you…in you.” 

Regina pressed her lips together to keep from whimpering pathetically. Yes, so she wanted that too. All of that and more besides. Again and again. She sighed when he nibbled at her jaw tantalisingly. 

“It’s been a very _long_ three weeks.” 

“I didn’t want you to go.” She groaned when he nipped at her ear with his teeth. 

“I didn’t know that.” He dragged his beard over her cheek, nuzzling into her. His nose rubbing against hers. He pressed a kiss to the tip of her nose and she smiled. 

A wolf greeting. She hadn’t been able to pry much of what it had been like to be raised by wolves from him back home but she had known that much. It was an intimate thing. Between pack –between family- only. 

His hands travelled up from the cinch of her waist, higher to span her ribs with his hands, his thumbs sweeping back and forth, stroking the underside of her breasts. She sighed into him, her hands tangling in his hair, and tugged his mouth down over hers. 

This kiss was different. Slow and unhurried, not stolen in quick nips here and there before Henry could see, not an angry claiming as it had been at the diner. This was a slow welcome home, a greeting after a long absence. 

Three weeks, only three weeks, it had felt much longer. 

He deepened the kiss, the sweet hello melting away under the heat of something fiercer, something that had been barely banked the entire day. Regina bowed back as he loomed over her, his hands sliding up her back, one tunnelling into her hair and angling her to the way he liked best.

This was new, the fervour that he kissed her with. He stooped a little, his hands sliding down her sides over her hips and around over her ass. He lifted her suddenly, pushing her backwards into the cupboards with a clatter. She squeaked into his mouth and he chuckled, boosting her up higher and kissing her harder. He growled low in his throat, deep growls rumbling out of his chest, and crushed her against the kitchen cabinet.

“God, Graham…” Regina moaned when he tore his mouth away from hers only to bite kisses that stung hot and sweet down her neck. 

“Tell me to stop.” He pinned her to the cupboard with his hips against hers. “Tell me to stop before I fuck you right here and now.” 

“Oh, yes please.” Regina squirmed against him, yanking at his sweater. God, it peeled off just like she’d been fantasising about all day. He wore just a tank top beneath it and that actually tore as she hauled it off of him. 

“Regina, I’m going to take you right here and now against the damn pantry door if you don’t stop me.” 

“I surrender, take me. Hard.” Regina murmured between kisses. “Now. Please.”

Graham groaned a pleased sound and there were no more words. They didn’t need any.

Regina’s hands tangled in his hair and then down his neck to the strong lines of his shoulders, her fingernails scoring red lines into his skin. His hips rolled against hers and she whimpered at the hot and hard feel of him grinding into her.

Had it really only been three weeks? It felt so much longer.

Regina chuckled as her hand slid down between them to press hard against the iron bar of his cock behind his jeans. 

He felt longer too. 

She unbuckled his belt one handed, sliding her hand inside and wrapping her fingers around the hot length of him. He bit her lip, thrusting into her hand, and hauled at the sweater dress she was wearing. His hands slid beneath the knitted material, delving between her legs and he froze at what he found…or what he didn’t find. 

“You…” Graham chuckled and thrust two fingers into her without any preamble at all. “You are neither wearing underwear nor actual leggings.” 

“Crotchless.” Regina’s head fell back against the cupboard door with a thud and she squirmed on his fingers. “Don’t stop.” 

“Can’t.” He kissed her again, licking into her mouth with his tongue and kissing her with a heat that she’d never even come close to feeling before.

His fingers thrust back and forth inside her, his thumb grinding over her clit and she began to pant. Her hips rocked up against his hand, her legs cinching against his hips, trying frantically to pull him closer. She shoved at his jeans, pushing them down over his hips.

He had to be in her. He had to be in her right now before she lost her damn mind. Her nails scored into his back, drawing a hiss from him and he added a third finger to those inside her and she arched, her mouth opening on a silent scream. 

She tried desperately to stay quiet, Henry was just upstairs, but –god- she’d missed this!

“Fuck me, Graham. Take me right now and take me hard.” She bit him hard on the lip, her voice hoarse from trying not to scream. “I want to feel you for days.” 

Something flashed in his eyes then, something stark and wild. Something she hadn’t seen since before the curse. Something that made every female part of her quiver in excitement. 

Graham withdrew his hand from her, gripped her waist, shoving her sweater dress higher up to ruck around her hips, then he dropped her onto his cock. 

He caught her scream in his mouth when he savaged her with a kiss. His hips fell into a frantic rhythm against hers. They both clattered hard into the cupboard door, the hinges creaking and the door banging with every pounding thrust he hammered her with. His hands were all over her. His teeth biting sweet and hot up and down her neck.

Regina slid up and down against the door, helpless to do anything else, deep groans ripped from her throat. Her fingers dragged up and down his spine, her teeth sinking into his shoulder. She pulled at his hair and dug her heels into his ass and otherwise clawed him into giving her exactly what she wanted.

And the door was _banging_. 

She was close, she was so damn close. Graham’s cock plunged in and out of her, giving her his full length every time, the base of it knocking against her clit with every lunge.

He spanned her ass with his large hands, burying his face in her hair and moaning her name amongst other expletives over and over.

His hands found hers somewhere, lacing their fingers together, drawing them up over her head and pinning them against the much abused pantry door. He looked her right in the eye, every muscle in his body working to please hers, and spoke in a low voice but she heard every word. 

“Christ, woman, I love ye.” 

Regina bucked against him, something in the door cracking behind her, and she came. She came harder than she ever had before. She seized him in a kiss, screaming into his mouth and he followed her over the edge. His hips crashed against her, groaning into her mouth, his fingers biting into her hips so hard he was bound to leave bruises. 

He collapsed against the cupboard door, ignoring the way it creaked alarmingly, panting into her neck. 

Regina shivered around him in delicious aftershocks, inner muscles squeezing him wonderfully, her chest heaving under his chin.

They shivered and shook into one another, coming down from the high. She nuzzled against him and he her. Graham gentled his hold on her hips, rubbing soothing circles to try and soothe the hurt that she didn’t mind in the slightest. There were far too many other much more enjoyable sensations trembling through her right then. 

Regina let her head fall back against the door with a thud, her eyes closed and her lower lip sucked between her teeth. She basked in the post coital glow and was rudely jerked out of it. 

“Mommy?” 

Regina snapped upright, nearly smacking her forehead into Graham’s for her troubles, and scrambled frantically at him. 

“Put me down!” She squeaked in alarm. 

She could see Henry’s little hand on the banister of the staircase, carefully coming down one step at a time. She had seconds before he got to the kitchen and she was in a state that no son should see his mother in. 

“No. Really?” Graham drawled and she growled at him. 

He lowered her to the floor, groaning as he pulled free of her and hoisted up his pants, stuffing his over-sensitised self back into his shorts and trying to remember how to buckle his belt. 

That had been…intense. 

Regina shoved her dress down and tunnelled her fingers through her hair to try and smooth it down a little. She needn’t have bothered, it was beyond hope. She hurried out to meet Henry, kicking her shoe off as she went as she had lost one at some point in all her thrashing against the pantry door. 

It was in the sink, but she didn’t know that. 

“Hey, sweetie, what are you doing out of bed?” Regina found a smile for him and tried not to look as wrung out as she felt. 

Good grief, Graham had applied himself with more vigour than she knew he possessed. He hadn’t been like that since before the curse either. 

“I heard a noise.” Henry rubbed at his sleepy eyes. 

“A noise?” Regina was already turning him back towards bed, she had no desire to try and explain the half-naked man in her kitchen to a three year old.

“It was loud.” Henry nodded. 

“Was it?” Regina pulled him up into her arms and propped him on her hip. He slung his arms around her neck and slapped Superted against her back. 

“Uh-huh. Is Graham still here?” 

“Yes.” 

“Is you guys havin’ a sleepover?” 

“Yes.” 

Regina spun, clutching Henry tight when Graham spoke directly behind her. He smirked at her and steadied her with a hand on her waist. 

“You gonna be here tomorrow?” 

“I have to leave early, but I’ll be back.” 

“And you’ll stay?”

“All day.” Graham nodded solemnly, following both of them up the stairs and into Henry’s bedroom again. 

“That’s good.” Henry yawned. 

“Yeah, it is.” Graham rubbed Henry’s hair and the little boy smiled shyly at him. 

“G’night, Graham.” 

“Goodnight, Henry.” Graham nodded and swept his finger down the bridge of Henry’s nose. 

Henry scrunched up his face and laughed but didn’t protest. 

Regina settled him in bed again and Graham watched from the door. 

She had never looked more beautiful, he thought. Her cheeks and neck were flushed, her hair wild and her lips bruised with kisses but it wasn’t just that. The way she smiled for Henry and kissed his forehead and then his nose, grinning when he giggled, and tucked him in tightly. She loved him, it shone from every part of her, and Graham thought that was…that was what he wanted. 

Regina gentled Henry back to sleep and then slipped from the room, joining Graham in the hallway again. She looked up at him, uncertain of what to say. She picked something eventually. 

“You want to actually drink coffee this time or…?” 

“I’m going to go with ‘or’.” Graham started towards her and she began to back away.

Not through any nervousness, she was leading him towards the bedroom. 

“How early is ‘early’?” Her tongue swept over her lower lip as she backed through her bedroom door, reaching out to tangle her fingers in his sweater and pull him after her. 

“I’ve got time yet.” 

“I can’t convince you to stay?” Regina wasn’t going to admit it, but she had missed him powerfully and the desire to wake up beside him again beat at her from all sides. 

“I said I’d come back.” Graham smiled for her and began to tug at her sweater. He wanted all of her this time. Every inch.

“Why waste the time? Stay.” She let him strip the dress up over her head and kicked off her shoes. 

“There’s Christmas magic to be made.” Graham dropped to his knees, dragging those nice leggings of hers down and off. 

“You can’t make it here? Really?” Regina lifted one bare leg and slid it over his shoulder, preventing him from rising. 

Well, she didn’t prevent _all_ of him from doing so. In fact, she quite encouraged it. 

“It’s a different kind of magic I make here.” Graham murmured against the soft skin of her inner thigh and she shivered above him, her head dropping back. 

His hands slid up her back to keep her in place and he buried his face between her thighs without further teasing, licking her from cleft to clit and drawing a deep sigh from her. Her fingers tangled through his hair. 

“Oh, yes,” Regina arched towards him and his talented tongue, relying on him to hold her up, “love me again.” 

He chuckled into her and murmured into her flesh. She wasn’t sure what he said, his tongue was very distracting even without words, but she was pretty sure that it had been something along the lines of…

“I’ll never stop.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gracious!
> 
> Sooooo sorry for leaving you guys hanging, not intentional, but this chapter has been finished for WEEKS and I haven't posted it because all things are happening all the time. Urgh. 
> 
> Anyways, Henry being so sweet is going to give me diabetes...well, that is or the donut stuffed with an eclair. For it is handegg season and the Superbowl approaches so that means I'mma eat snack foods until I pass out. 
> 
> Thank you for all the reviews, I'm working away on other things but college right now affords me about five freaking words of fanfiction a day so you can see how that might cut down the update speed. Still, chapter 17 of H+aH is written...just not 16. 
> 
> Because they're being dicks and it is entirely not my fault. You wanna yell at someone, yell at Reggie and GG. 
> 
> Not my fault. 
> 
> Anyways, on with the show. Review if you love me and don't pay any attention to the fact that this is now out of season :D

**Chapter 2 – Sleigh-bells Ring**

 

_**Christmas Eve Morning…** _

 

Regina’s eyes snapped open and she stretched her arm out across the bed in one move. She inhaled deeply, getting a head full of his scent, and frowned when the mattress was cool under her palm. 

He was gone. 

Regina felt a pang low in her gut at the loss and tried to shake it off. 

It didn’t work. 

She hadn’t wanted to wake up alone this morning. In fact, she had spent most of the night _convincing_ Graham to put off his early morning plans and stay with her. She had been very attentive in that regard and was a little stung that it hadn’t panned out how she had thought it would. She had always been able to curb him to her will before. 

Where was this newfound willpower coming from?

Regina sat up, rubbing a hand over her face and up into her hair. She wore his sweater from the day before. She had a vague memory of him helping her into it in the dark, kissing her temple and telling her he’d be back soon. 

She was beginning to hate that word. 

She was beginning to think it didn’t mean what she thought it meant at all. 

A faint rattling of the door handle turned her attention to the door and Henry must have succeeded in pulling it down on the second jump because the door flew open and he staggered into the room giggling. 

“Hi, mommy!”

“Hello, sweetheart.” Regina smiled indulgently for him as he ran around the side of the bed to hurl himself up onto the edge of the high mattress. 

“Uff! Is Graham gone?” Henry grunted with the effort of trying to get up onto the bed and thanked her when she reached over and hauled him up to sit beside her. 

“Yes, he’s gone.” 

“Aww, I wanted to say buh-bye.” Henry knelt beside her, looking pensive for a moment, then brightened considerably. “He said he’d come back soon though! Then stay for the whooooooole day!”

“Yes. He did, didn’t he?” 

“Uh-huh!” Henry bounced happily a moment and then clambered onto her lap. Kneeling up on her legs and wrapping his arms around her neck. “Don’t look sad, mommy. I miss him too, but he’s coming back.” 

Regina was stunned a moment. Was everyone seeing through her mask? She forced herself to brighten and wrapped her arms around him, kissing him soundly on the cheek. 

“How can I be sad? I have the best boy in the world and it’s Christmas Eve. We have lots to do today.” 

“’Til Graham gets back?” 

Regina smirked ruefully and nodded her head.

“Yes, until Graham gets back.” 

Which had better be soon because the longer she was left to stew in the feelings of his absence, the more irritable she was likely to become with herself. Her moment of weakness in admitting she wanted him to stay the night before clawed at her insides…but she couldn’t find it within herself to regret it. 

If nothing else he had most thoroughly applied himself to reintroducing them to one another and making up for the lost three weeks. Regina still ached deliciously and she was tired, but in a good way. She felt delightfully…ridden.

“I’m hungry.” Henry decided.

“Well, isn’t it good that it’s breakfast time?” 

“Toast!” Henry bounced on her lap and grinned happily. 

“Toast? Just toast? You don’t want…?”

“TOAST!”

“Alright.” Regina caved but did it with a smile. 

She helped him down off the bed, found a robe to put on, and then let him lead her down the stairs, enthusing about toast the whole time. 

Regina smiled, grasping his little hand in hers. She had a day off, her little boy wanted only toast to make his day complete in that moment and her lover would be back soon.

Now, if only he would hurry up and do so.

 

_**Later…** _

 

Graham was apparently not in a hurry. 

It was mid-morning and Henry was on his second batch of toast amongst watching cartoons, flying around the living room and over the furniture with Superted and drawing with his crayons on the plain paper that had been tacked up over the walls from the doorknobs down in the hallway. 

Regina had learned the hard way not to leave anywhere that could be reached with Crayola unprotected.

Still, he only asked for Graham occasionally and seemed mostly content that this ‘soon’ would be a lot sooner than the last one. Graham had promised after all. 

Regina was dealing with the separation anxiety with less…élan. 

She paced back and forth in the living room, growing irritable with the endless Christmas specials parading across the television screen and kept padding to the window to scowl out of it at the lightly falling snow.

Her annoyance was mostly aimed inward. She was on edge, she was pining for him like some lovesick moron and she knew it. She was crushing so hard on a man that she’d had lock, cock and barrel for thirty years and it was completely beyond her as to why now was different. 

She’d gone without him before…hadn’t she?

She must have. 

There must have been a time when she had neither needed nor wanted his affections.

Regina stared sightlessly at the snow and mulled it over. Rifling backwards through the memories of her long life and finding…nothing. 

Since she had first summoned him, first trapped him, first kept him, she’d been without him for a grand total of…two weeks? Had it been two weeks?

She had left on a negotiation trip to the Southern nation of Gaul to treat with a druid who could make a potion that empowered those who drank it with incredible strength and durability. Her Huntsman had been left to deal with a highwayman that had been irritating her in the Eastern roadways. 

It had been a short trip that had felt a lot longer.

She’d spoken with the druid and had been disappointed to know that it was only his people that could withstand the strength of the potion through centuries of exposure through the generations. So she had been physically able and capable of making it but it would simply –literally- burn up anyone that she dosed it with in the Enchanted Forest. The villagers in Gaul had more than enough of their own enemies to deal with and had been unable and unwilling to leave their home unprotected in order to come and fight for her. 

Considering that even the smallest child in the village could uproot an oak tree with one hand, Regina hadn’t fancied her chances of capturing any slaves. 

So she had been a very irritable and frustrated monarch upon her return and who knew what might have happened had she not met her Huntsman in the stables. She had slung herself down from her own horse and tended to him herself to try and work out some frustration with the rigorous work of grooming him. Once finished, she had still been on the verge of turning someone into a bug just because when she had spun around to leave the stall and found him filling the doorway. 

Regina bit her lip when she remembered how he had looked. 

He’d been little more than a living shadow. Covered in dark leathers and furs, festooned with blades and blood still splattered across his face from when he had taken the highwayman’s head. His pale eyes had glittered when he had seen her, his red tongue tracing over white teeth like a wolf after a free meal and she honestly couldn’t remember who had moved first.   
It hardly mattered when the result had been him fucking her right then and there on the stable floor, her dress having been cut from her with his sword and most of his clothes burned away with magic. He’d snarled at her and she’d screamed for him and she rather imagined that her horse had been a bit embarrassed and had never looked at her the same way again. 

After that, she had taken her Huntsman to bed for three days and –upon her return to the throne- had been a lot mellower thereafter. 

It had not escaped her notice that her advisors had –from then on- encouraged her to take her Huntsman as her personal bodyguard, promoting him from general to her armies and executor of her will. 

She had ignored them, of course, her Huntsman had been the only one she had trusted because he was bound to obey her in a way that no other in her castle had. He’d been the only one with a heart that she kept close. The only heart she had taken that she had let its owner live…other than the unicorn. 

But she had never been in the habit of killing beautiful wild animals. 

Which was probably why the Huntsman had lived so long. 

Regina jumped, torn from her memories when a knock rang throughout the corridor. She spun, confused for a moment, and realised belatedly what she was supposed to do. 

Henry had disappeared off to the bathroom a few moments prior so it was her herself that went to the front door and answered. 

Regina opened the door and blinked when she was confronted with…Santa. 

Graham. Graham was dressed as Santa Claus and…well, she wouldn’t be finding his like on the side of any Coca Cola trucks in the near future that was for sure. Not unless they started using guy from the eleven thirty adverts instead of the jolly old man. 

Graham stood with a red sack over his shoulder, the long tailed hat with the white fur trim and pompom at the end. A long red coat trimmed with more white fur, a white shirt, red waistcoat, red pants and knee high black leather boots completed the ensemble. 

“Ho-ho-ho.” He greeted her with a smirk and stepped over the threshold of the door, slid his free arm around her waist and pressed a searing, addling, kiss to her lips. He gave her a moment to absorb the feel of him pressed against her and then released her from the kiss. “Good morning.” 

“Uh, well, uhm…what?” Regina was still distracted by the beard, god damn it. She was going to have to get him to shave it if she wanted to function as an adult in the near future. 

“I take that as a complement.” Graham grinned at her and she shoved at his chest. 

“You’re letting the cold air in.” 

“Best to come right on in then, hmm?” Graham smirked down at her, his hand sliding lower over the curve of her ass and stepping close so his front was flush with hers and she felt the hardness of every inch of him. 

Like that, he walked her a couple of steps backwards and kicked the door shut behind himself and dumped the sack onto the floor. 

“I come bearing gifts.” He smiled down at her and Regina pressed her lips together when she felt the heat begin to crawl up her neck. 

Honestly, she had been dictator for life on their home world and she was reduced to a flushing wreck by a single man?

Well…considering the man, she’d have had him even if he wasn’t single.

Regina cleared her throat and tried that whole conversation thing again. 

“My, aren’t we dressed festively.” She toyed with the gold buttons of his coat. Honestly, where had he even gotten this outfit from?

And how difficult would it be to get him out of it because she was rather enamoured with the idea of him just in the hat and boots right at that second. 

“I’m Santa’s friend. Got to sport the family colours, right?” 

“Right.” Regina stroked the smooth fur of the coat. “How many polar bears died for this?” 

“It’s fake. The polar bears work in Santa’s workshop. Can’t go recycling the workforce.” Graham winked at her and she found herself smiling at him despite the absolute nonsense he was spouting. 

Well, maybe because of it too.

“Sheriff Graham!” Henry yelled in delight and Regina stepped back from Graham. 

Graham reluctantly released the pleasant hold he’d had on her but couldn’t help but grin when the little boy crashed into his legs, hugging one of them just above the knee fiercely. 

“Happy Christmas Eve!”

Graham laughed and bent down, unable to help himself. He scooped Henry up off the floor and threw him into the air to catch him again making Henry squeal with delight. 

“Happy Christmas Eve, to you too, Henry.” 

“You’re dressed like Santa!” Henry, ever the observant little boy, bopped the pompom at the end of Graham’s hat and watched it swing back and forth. “Coooooooll!”

“It is rather chilly.” Graham nodded, deliberately misunderstanding. “Which is why I’ve brought….presents!”

“Presents!” Henry squealed and bounced in Graham’s arms. “For me and mommy?” 

“Yes, for you and mommy.” Graham set the little boy down when he looked close to simply hurling himself from Graham’s arms in his eagerness. 

Graham sank down onto his heels and opened the sack. Reaching inside he pulled out a large green hat that drew to a point. It had a red spiked fringe around the brim and a bell jangled from the point of the hat and each spike of the brim. It looked odd and Regina frowned at it but watched whilst Graham pushed it onto Henry’s head. 

“It’s heavy!” Henry wobbled under the apparent weight of it and reached up to straighten it. He giggled. “It’s an elf hat.” 

“Yes, you’re my elf today.” Graham reached out and wobbled Henry’s head a little, making the boy giggle and the bells ring. 

Regina arched a brow. She supposed she had jingling to look forward to for the foreseeable future for she had a sudden premonition that Henry wasn’t removing that hat for anything. He would probably want to sleep in it. 

And she had just managed to convince him to go to bed without his red wellingtons as well. 

“And this is for mommy.” Graham pulled another present from the sack and unfolded it with a snap of his hands. 

A long dark blue cashmere coat trimmed with beautiful golden fur billowed from his hands and Regina’s lips parted in surprise. She reached out hesitantly and stroked the fur. It was soft. Real fur. Rabbit if she had to guess. 

Hang the morals, it was wonderful. 

“Put it on, mommy!” Henry jumped up and down, his hat jangling.

Regina looked down at Henry and couldn’t help but smile. Fine, she’d play along. Turning, she gave Graham her back and let him help her into the coat. It was deliciously warm, the cuffs trimmed with more gold fur, the lining was royal purple silk and the collar wide and dramatic, flicking up to rub against her jaw if she turned her head. 

“And this.” Graham reached into the sack for a large hat box and held it out to her. 

Regina arched a brow but opened the box anyway and laughed when she saw a matching broad brimmed hat in the box. Deep blue and trimmed with gold fur around the base of the hat. A fan of peacock and pheasant feathers trailing from it. 

“Preeetty.” Henry cooed and she bent to let him see it. He reverently petted the fur and then grinned up at her. “Put it on, mommy.” 

Regina straightened and shook her hair back, pulling the hat down over her head and glancing over at her reflection in the mirror. 

She stilled at who looked back at her.

Without the golden fur, if it had been black anyway, she looked very like her old self again. 

“You look beautiful.” Graham stepped forward, displeased with the sudden pensive expression that overtook her, and kissed her cheek. 

Henry giggled and that appeared to break the spell over her. She smiled at him. 

“Thank you.” 

“Oh, I’m not done yet. I promised reindeer, didn’t I?” Graham looked down at Henry and the little boy looked up at him with eyes as wide as saucers. 

“In there?!” He squeaked, pointing at the sack. 

“Kind of.” Graham stooped again and emptied the sack of its last presents and held out two stuffed reindeer toys to Henry. 

Henry looked down at them with a confused frown on his face. He had really been expecting something a bit more…well, just more. 

Still, he was too polite to say that. 

“Ah, you doubt me, but I’ve not done the magic yet.” Graham grinned, knowing exactly what the lad was thinking. “This one is Binky and this one is Gruff.” 

“Binky and Gruff?” Regina chuckled and Henry looked up at her with reproachfully. 

“I said it didn’t have to be Rudolph and I def’nitly didn’t ask for two.” 

“My mistake.” Regina sobered even if her mouth quirked a little with a smirk.

“Well, these are new reindeer. They’ve not had a chance on the sleigh yet. They’re still in training. So Santa said we could have them for a little while.” Graham confided in Henry.

“How do we do the magic? How?!” Henry jumped up and down in his eagerness and set his hat to ringing jauntily. 

Oh yes, she was going to be sick of the sound of bells within the week. 

“Put on your coat and boots and I’ll show you.” Graham smirked at Henry and looked sidelong at Regina. “Mommy too.” 

“Quick, mommy! _Quick!”_ Henry darted over and gripped her fingers, all but dragging her to the coat stand. 

Regina shot a look at Graham but she had come this far so she might as well see where the reindeer were going to be summoned from. She had no idea where he was going to get reindeer from. There were none within the borders of Storybrooke (not that she had checked or anything) and she knew Graham. He was not the type to disappoint Henry so whatever he had planned was probably going to be hysterical, impressive or both. 

Regina found herself helping Henry into his coat and wellingtons more eagerly than she had anticipated she might. Surprised that she was excited to find out about the reindeer too. 

Still, it was a few minutes until they were outside in the snow. It was, in fact, snowing, but only lightly and the weather was actually the warmer for it. Graham hustled them all outside, bidding Regina to lock the door and scooped up Henry, stuffed reindeer and all, and carried him out onto the road beyond the garden gate. 

Regina frowned, following at a more sedate pace. What was he up to?

Still, she followed him over and watched as he set Henry down onto the snow that reached past the little tyke’s knees. They were in absolutely no danger of being hit by a car. The roads had been all but impassable the past week and most people had simply given in to walking everywhere. There were only two ploughs. 

She knew this intimately, she had a pile of complaints about said same about a foot high on her desk. 

They made _excellent_ kindling for the fire in her office. 

“We gonna do the magic now?” Henry looked up at Graham with one part wonder and one part scepticism. He was Regina’s son after all. 

“Yes. You’ve got to plant them.” Graham pointed to the snow in front of Henry and sank down onto his heels, long red coat pooling around him, when the boy frowned at him. “Like a seed. We’ve got to grow them.” 

Henry frowned, and then smiled. Of course. That made perfect sense. 

He helped Graham dig into the snow and buried the reindeer toys until only their little antlers poked out of the snow and then looked up at Graham expectantly. 

“Now the magic dust.” Graham reached into a pocket of his coat and his hand came out brimming with golden dust. 

Regina had to stop herself from shrinking away from it until she reminded herself that there were no diamonds in Storybrooke for the faeries to make dust with even if they’d had their memories back in the first place. It was nothing more dangerous than glitter bough from the craft store. 

“Ooooh.” Henry took two fistfuls of the glitter and spread it liberally all over the toy antlers poking out the packed snow and a good two foot radius besides. 

Never let it be said he didn’t do things without his whole heart. 

“Now what?” He looked at Graham eagerly. 

“Now mommy has to help.” Graham looked up at Regina and she dutifully waded through the snow to reach their side. Graham bent and drew an X in the snow behind Henry. “Stand here.” 

Regina arched an eyebrow at him and stepped onto the X. 

“Now, Henry, hold these.” Graham dug into yet another pocket of his coat and produced two carrots. He put one into each of Henry’s mittened hands, ignoring the glitter embedded into them. “And, mommy, when I tell you, you have to clap three times.”

Regina nodded. Fine. Still playing along. 

“I’ve got to cover your eyes and, when I tell you, you have to shout on Gruff and Binky, okay?” Graham crouched down next to Henry again. 

“Why you gotta do that? I wanna see them grow.” 

“It’s part of the magic. You never see Santa Clause, do you?” 

“That’s only ‘cause I’m not big enough to wait up all night to see him.” Henry told Graham primly and the Sheriff smiled. 

“Be that as it may, I have to cover your eyes to make sure you don’t see.” 

“Okay.” Henry heaved a sigh. 

“Hold up the carrots.” 

Henry lifted both carrots as high as he could and Graham reached out with one hand and covered Henry’s eyes. 

“Now, mommy, clap three times.” 

Regina lifted her hands and clapped. 

“Louder.” Graham tilted his head and Regina, sparing him an arch look, clapped again. 

“Call them.” 

“BINKYYYY! GRUUU-UUUFF!” Henry bellowed and Graham reached out, seizing both toy reindeer by the antlers and promptly flinging them wildly over the garden hedge to land with a squeak quite a distance away. 

“Clap again.” 

Regina clapped but only twice before she realised what they were summoning. She laughed despite herself and Henry squirmed. 

“I hear sleigh bells!”

“Be still, they’re not here yet.” Graham warned him and Henry held himself as still as he could, even if he vibrated with the need to push Graham’s hand aside and see the reindeer coming. 

Regina chuckled when she saw what he had done. 

Two _huge_ Clydesdale horses trotted around the corner, powerful feathered legs sending the snow flying, snorting steam and jangling the bells hanging from their reins and martingales. They obediently trotted right up to them and slid to a halt when Graham held up his hand. 

Regina grinned when she saw that they had been dressed for the part. Both horses were brown with white legs and splashes of white on their faces but they wore a ruff of fur around their necks to disguise their manes had real antlers attached firmly to their thick red leather bridles and their tails had been bundled up so they looked shorter. They wore fine red leather livery etched with gold with more golden bells hanging from seemingly everywhere. 

Both horses, eyeing the carrots in Henry’s hands bent their heads to munch their treat when Graham dropped his hand and stood, lifting his other hand away from Henry’s eyes. 

Henry opened his eyes to see two gigantic ‘reindeer’ happily devouring the carrots he held in his hands and he squealed in delight. 

Neither Binky nor Gruff seemed to mind this little jingling bundle of excitement jumping up and down on the other end of their carrots. Both carrots rapidly disappeared and then the gentle giant horses leaned eagerly forward and snuffled at Henry’s face and neck for more, uncaring when their antlers clacked against one another. 

“Behave yerselves.” Graham clicked his tongue in a warning and both horses lifted their heads and stepped back from Henry when Graham moved between them and took their reins. He turned to look down at Henry. “Now…do you want to ride?”

“Can I?” Henry gaped up at Graham and then twisted to look at Regina. “Can I, mommy?!”

“Well…” Regina looked from Henry up to the gigantic Binky and Gruff and her mouth twisted. 

She could handle such a humungous steed herself just fine, as Graham well knew, but Henry was so tiny and he didn’t even have a helmet. 

“Taken care of.” Graham seemed to read her mind and he scooped Henry up into his arms and then knocked the boy sharply on the head three times. 

Regina blinked when a dull thunking sound was all she heard rather than Henry’s yelp of pain and she realised he must have covered a riding helmet with the hat. 

“Can I? Can I _pleeeeeeaase!_?” Henry bounced enthusiastically in Graham’s arms and tinkled merrily with the bells on his hat. 

“I…suppose. For a little while.” Regina tried to inject a little realism with the last but Henry was cackling madly at the magic all around him and he hugged Graham tightly about the neck and squirmed with happiness. 

Graham, for his part, looked smug. 

“Do you want to ride Binky or Gruff?” Graham pointed to one hor- ahem –reindeer after the other.

“Binky!” Henry bounced again and stilled a little when Graham set him down on the ground. He frowned up at him. “I’mma need help up.”

“Yes you will.” Graham chuckled. “But I’m going to help your mommy up onto Gruff first.”

“Oh, good, I was thinking I might have to fetch the stepladder from the garage.” 

“Quiet, you.” Graham warned her. “No Scrooging or the magic will wear off.” 

“Hmm.” Regina hummed low in her throat and let her hand be taken so Graham could lead her around to Gruff’s huge flank. Honestly, she could have almost walked under his belly without ducking. 

Graham slipped his hands around the cinch of her waist and dipped his head under the brim of her hat. His lips ghosted over her ear as he spoke. 

“Ready?” 

Regina’s brain did that short circuiting thing again when his beard rubbed over her skin and she just about managed a nod. 

“Good.” Graham boosted her up into the saddle with his hands on her hips. Not typically how it was done, but he’d wanted the excuse to be close to her.

Regina quickly found her seat and set about adjusting the stirrups for herself and Graham ducked under Gruff’s neck to pick up Henry again. 

“Ready to fly?”

“Uh-huh!” Henry eagerly scrambled up onto the front of the saddle when Graham lifted him onto it. 

“He’s not riding with me?” Regina’s tone was carefully neutral but Graham, with a hand on Henry’s leg to keep him from going anywhere, turned to lay her concerns to rest. 

“Elves ride with Santa.” He softened when the humour was lost on her. “He’ll be fine, I’ve got it covered.” 

Regina frowned but hummed in the back of her throat. She’d allow it. For now.

Graham vaulted easily up onto Binky’s back, the stirrups fine for his long legs, and settled Henry close to his front. He undid the huge black leather belt he wore, looped it around Henry too, and buckled it again.

Regina smirked at the safety belt. She knew Graham to be more than a competent rider. Both of them could ride bareback and steer with nothing more than their knees. If Henry was attached to Graham, it was doubtful he was going anywhere. Even if he was, Graham was more than capable of cushioning the little boy’s fall. 

“Okay?” Graham looked over at her and she smiled at him and nodded. 

“Okay.” 

Graham beamed at her when he realised he’d won a genuine smile from her and he gathered up the reins.

“You alright, Henry?” 

“It’s really high up here.” Henry looked over the side of his reindeer and all the way down to the ground. A distance equal to Graham’s own height.

“You scared?” 

“Nope!” Henry tilted his head back, thumping Graham in the chest with his helmet hat, and looked up at the man upside down. “This is fun.” 

“You haven’t seen anything yet.” Graham grinned, leaning forward to grip a fistful of that fur ruff and closing both arms tightly about Henry. He rose a little in his saddle and that was all the warning Regina got before he simply took off. “Fly!”

Graham sank his heels into Binky’s sides and the Clydesdale reared, crow hopping forward, front hooves churning and hit the ground again with all four legs going full pelt. 

Regina’s eyebrows shot up and she gathered her reins further when Gruff whinnied shortly and cavilled backwards nervously when Binky tore off down the street, snow flying in his wake.

Still, Gruff’s ears perked and his head came up. 

Regina rolled her eyes. 

“Go on then.” 

Gruff whinnied and lifted his legs, throwing them both forward into a powering canter after Binky, Henry and Graham. 

Still, Regina smiled when she caught snatches of Henry’s hysterical laughter floating back to them over the ringing sounds of the bells. 

As magic went, it was quite impressive.

 

_**Later, Granny’s…** _

 

“Do they really have to go?” Henry reached up from where he sat in Regina’s arms and petted Gruff and then Binky on the nose. 

Both horses were snorting and cavilling, having enjoyed their morning run about town, but the snow was deep and it had been hard going for them. They needed to go back to the stables for a rub down and extra carrots. 

“They’ve got to go back to the workshop. They run in treadmills to power the machines. Santa was very generous giving them to us just for the morning.” Graham smiled at Henry. “Don’t be sad. Maybe we can see them again next year.” 

“Okay.” Henry was crestfallen for a moment but then he brightened. “Thank you, Graham.” 

“Not a problem.” Graham reached out and batted the bell on Henry’s hat, setting it to jingling again. 

“When do they go?”

“Uh, right now, here comes the elf.” Graham pointed and Regina turned so Henry could see and her eyebrows flew up when an honest to god elf trotted down the street towards them. 

Regina smirked after a moment when she recognised the daughter of the couple that owned the stables but her outfit was more than convincing enough for Henry. 

The girl wore green tights and curl toed booties with bells on them, a red tunic, a green scarf and a helmet that matched Henry’s with the elf hat over the top of it. She had fake pointed ears covering her own, glitter dusted her cheeks and she grinned toothily at Henry and handed him a candy cane. 

“Thanks, Marie.” Graham smiled and handed the reins for Binky and Gruff over to Marie the elf along with a couple of folded bills. 

“No problem, Sheriff Santa.” Marie grinned again doled out candy canes to both Graham and Regina, sprang up onto Gruff’s back and spurred the horses away. 

“BYE, BINKY! BYE, GRUFF!” Henry bellowed so loud that Regina winced but she didn’t chastise him. 

The irony that this was the most magical morning Henry had ever had and it had all been from a man with the magical signature of a brick and not from his mother who was a sorcerer of no small power was not lost on her. She was…grateful that it had come from Graham. Her magic had never been suited to the task of making people happy. Not even herself. 

“Mommy, can I take off my hat now?” Henry reached up with a mitten and pushed at it. “It’s heavy.” 

“Sure thing, honey. Graham?” 

“Got ye covered.” Graham reached over and pulled the hat from Henry’s head, laughing at the little boy’s hat hair. He ruffled Henry’s hair and earned a giggle for his troubles. Graham pried the elf hat off the helmet and then pulled it down over Henry’s head. “Better?” 

“Yes, thank you.” Henry had to push the brim up when it fell down over his eyes as the hat was now far too big for him but he didn’t mind and Regina thought it was completely adorable. 

“Right then, let’s get inside and get warm!” Graham hustled both Regina and Henry towards the steps of the diner and Regina let herself be herded along with his hands on her waist. 

Graham hurried around them to open the door and let them inside, sure not to miss his opportunity to press a kiss to her cheek under the mistletoe, and grinned when Ruby squeaked from behind the bar. 

“Well, if it isn’t Sheriff Santa Clause!” Ruby grinned and clapped her hands. Giddy with excitement. “Lunch is almost ready for you guys.” 

“Lunch?” Regina looked up at Graham with a slight frown. 

“You think I stopped here for nothing?” Graham looked down at her and winked. “Granny’s cooking up something special for us.” 

“Why?” 

“Because it’s the season of goodwill?” Graham raised his eyebrows with practiced innocence.

Regina narrowed her eyes a little at him and set Henry down when his squirming became insistent. She sank down onto her heels and helped unwind Henry from his scarf, shuck his little jacket and even peel off his sweater. Since they were used to the freezing weather outside and the rushing wind of a wild ride, the diner was positively balmy in comparison. 

“Thank you, mommy.” Henry pulled his elf hat back on, blindfolding himself with it in the process and giggling when Regina had to help him push it back up so he could see again.

“Go pick a seat, sweetheart.” Regina batted at the bell on his hat and ducked when he reached up so he could pet the fur and feather on hers. 

He giggled again and ran off to find a seat. 

Regina rested her elbows on her knees, watching him run off, and turned only when Graham’s hand appeared in her line of vision. She slipped her fingers into his and let him pull her to her feet. He had a strange kind of smile on his face. 

“What?” She pulled her hat from her head and smoothed the feathers down a little.

“You’re good at that.” 

“Getting a three year old to do as he’s told? Not as difficult as it seems considering I’m four times his size.” 

“More like two and a half.” Graham tilted his head and smiled when she chuckled. “No, I was referring to motherhood in general. You seem to be a dab hand at it.” 

“It’s not all smooth sailing like today.” Regina was caught off guard by the compliment and did what she always did when she didn’t expect or understand something. She pushed it away.   
She looked down as she slipped from her own coat and turned to hang it and her hat up on the coatrack alongside Henry’s little clothes. 

“You’re good at it.” Graham insisted. “I bet you’d be good at it again.” 

Regina rounded on him so quickly that her heel squeaked loudly against the linoleum floor. 

“What?!” She looked at him wild eyed and shaken. 

Graham removed his coat and scarf but not his hat and hung them on the coat rack beside hers. He turned to her and stuffed his hands into his pockets, grinning. 

“I’m ready when you are.” 

“What?” Regina’s voice was quieter that time but no less alarmed for it. 

“Ready for lunch?” Graham nodded his head in the direction of their table and Regina frowned, wondering if she had misunderstood. 

She narrowed her eyes at his smile and he just grinned at her. 

He wanted to mess with her. Fine. He’d been puckish all day and she’d allowed it for Henry but there was a limit. Being reminded that she couldn’t physically have children so long as she was affected by the curse was skating pretty close to that limit…though he didn’t know that. 

He would never know that. 

Because he was cursed alongside everyone else and his heart was in the drawer in her nightstand in a velvet lined box rather than being in his chest and…

Regina let loose a slow sigh, looking outside at the snow falling thicker and faster now that the temperature was dropping. 

“What is it, love?” 

Regina jumped when his hand found her waist and –rather than pulling away from him like she should- she leaned into the contact like she wanted to. 

Just for today, she would pretend. Just for today, she would let herself believe her own lie. Just for today…

Just for today. 

“Nothing.” She forced a smile. “Just tired.” 

“You sure?” He frowned a little, that false concern that looked so real emanating from him all over. 

“Yes, it’s been a busy morning.” 

His frown deepened, his eyes tracking over her and he hummed in the back of his throat, letting it slide. 

“Okay, well, we get to sit for a while before the afternoon really kicks off.”

“There’s more?”

“Of course. It’s Christmas Eve,” Graham slid his arm slyly around her waist and pulled her with him towards the table Henry had picked, “there’s magic in the very air itself.” He repeated his words to Henry yesterday and Regina rolled her eyes but there was a sense of a smile about her. 

His smile broadened at that. She was letting him. Letting him be close to her, physically and emotionally, in public no less. He hadn’t known this was what he wanted until she’d let it happen and he knew now that he was never going back to the way it had been before. He did not want to settle for less. He wasn’t going to be at her beck and call anymore. He didn’t want to be just her lover. He wanted to be…hers. All hers. As much as he wanted her to be all his. 

“You’re staring.” She noticed. 

“I’m admiring.” He smiled when they reached the table and leaned down to her, pressing a kiss to her lips that was positively chaste considering yesterday under the mistletoe. “You are wonderful. Every piece of you. I’ll take as many as you want to give, love, but I want more. I want all of you. Make no mistake.”

“I…uh…” Regina closed her eyes and shook her head sharply. “Please stop doing that to me.” 

“Why? I kind of like that I’m the only one that can reduce you to a stammering, flushing, wreck.” 

“It’s not exactly conducive to inspiring confidence. Especially if you want to convince the rest of the town that this isn’t a conflict of interests.” She waved between them and had no idea where this was coming from. 

He was going to forget, she reminded herself. A couple of days and he’d forget that he’d ever said any of this. The cyclical programming of the curse would take over and he’d go back to being his usual biddable self. So there was no point in entertaining notions of what she couldn’t have. No point in getting Henry’s hopes up about a daddy that couldn’t truly love them both. 

No point in thinking about this in the long term. There was no long term. 

_Soooo…what does it matter if you indulge?_ That treacherous, wheedling, voice returned. 

Regina pressed her lips together and tried to ignore it. 

It mattered because…because…damn it. It mattered because, if they both started believing her lie it was going to blow up in her face at some point. The shrapnel would fly in all directions, most of it piercing her heart no doubt but some of it might get Henry too and she was a mother. She couldn’t risk that kind of harm to him.

_If you both believe it, is it still a lie?_

Regina’s jaw clenched at that and she stiffened even further when Graham bent and pressed a kiss to the corner of her jaw. 

“Relax,” he misread her tension, “it’ll all work out. I’m not giving up on you. Even if it means stepping down as Sheriff.” 

Regina’s head snapped up to look at him. 

“What?” She frowned. He definitely wasn’t supposed to think things like that. “What would you do?” 

“Become an honorary elf full time?” He shrugged his shoulders and grinned. “It’ll never come to that. Our job security is that no one else wants to do what we do. Archie was practically begging me to come back. It would seem his compromising nature doesn’t work during a bar brawl.”

Regina smirked a little at that but she felt the need to give him an excuse. 

“That’s all well and good for you but I’m the Mayor, there are quite a few people that want my job.” 

“And that’s exactly why they shouldn’t have it. The people of this town know that and – I hate to burst your bubble- but our relationship is the worst kept secret Storybrooke has ever seen. _Everybody_ knows and _nobody_ cares.”

“Well, I don’t think that’s quite accurate…” Regina began but Ruby, sailing on by to serve a coffee refill at another table, cut her off. 

“So true!”

Regina clipped her teeth together and scowled at him a little. He just smiled at her. 

“Run out of excuses yet?” 

“No.” Regina told him archly, but she couldn’t summon another one right then. 

She blamed the beard.

“Well, you can save them for later because it’s lunch time and I haven’t finished winning Henry over to my side.”

“Winning…? You’ll use my own son against me?” Regina turned to try and glare at him when he left her to scoot into the booth beside Henry. 

“Every chance I get.” Graham grinned at her and Henry, kneeling on his phonebook beside him, looked up at Graham’s expression and then turned to her. Grinning the biggest, cheesiest, grin in his repertoire.

“That’s not very fair.” Regina took her own seat. 

“Everything is in love and war.” Graham shrugged at her and Henry mimicked that too. 

“And which is this?” 

“Whichever one wins me you.” Graham spoke with another smile but his tone was utterly serious. 

“I’m not some prize…” Regina tried to take offence but her heart wasn’t in it. 

“But you are my present.” Graham steamrollered over her smoothly. “And my future. You’re my Christmas List, love, and this is the season for getting what you want.”

Regina just looked at him for a long moment, flummoxed, and the spell was only broken by Henry. 

“Mommy, you could put a bow round your neck like they did with Lady in the movie!” 

Regina turned to look at him with a frown on her face. 

“And have a little tag sayin’ ‘for Sheriff Graham’ and sit under the tree.” Henry grinned at her and then sobered after a moment. “I’d sit with you too. So you wasn’t alone.” 

“Weren’t alone.” She corrected him absently. Her boy was never getting to watch Lady and the Tramp again.

“Uh-huh.” Henry nodded and smiled. 

“I approve of this plan, if that helps.” Graham grinned at her. Looked like Henry was already on his side. 

“Can I have a bow too?” Henry asked with utter seriousness. “Mommy and me are a package deal.” 

Graham grinned, he suspected he’d heard that from Granny, he put his arm around Henry and answered in an equally serious tone. 

“Henry, it’s Christmas, you can have whatever you want.” He looked over at Regina and watched her eyes widen with his next words. 

“ _Especially_ if it’s me.”

 

**_Later…_ **

 

“It’s so high up here!”

Graham chuckled at Henry’s exclamation from the vantage point of sitting on his shoulders and Regina couldn’t help but smile. 

They were on their way…somewhere. She carried a sack that she had been forbidden to look into and Graham carried Henry, his hands encircling Henry’s ankles to keep him in place and Henry holding onto the bobble of Graham’s hat. 

Graham wore a different coat to the one he’d gone into the diner with. It was the same cut, the same materials, the same fur, but significantly shortened, only coming down to his hips. After they’d had their lunch (a monstrosity of many different foods shaped like candies but tasting nothing of the kind) his long coat had been replaced with the shorter version and a new sack filled with…whatever sitting at the bottom of the coat stand. 

Her anticipation may well kill him if he wasn’t careful. 

Regina had no idea how he was pulling all of this off. She suspected the Lucas miscreants’ involvement but had no proof other than their knowing grins. 

She was more than a little irritated at the prospect of them knowing something she didn’t. 

As far as Henry was concerned it was all part of the Christmas magic and she certainly didn’t have the heart to burst such a precious bubble for him. So she allowed it and she followed Graham and she didn’t look in the sack. 

Even if she really, really, _really_ , wanted to. 

They were walking down a lane roofed by rows of trees, the snow much shallower under their shelter, towards the edge of town and she was trying to think where on earth they might be headed when they rounded the corner and she smiled despite herself. 

Of course. 

“Ooooh.” Henry’s eyes went as wide as saucers and he shoved his hat up in order to watch enraptured at whatever… _this_ was. “What’s that, mommy?” 

“Ice skating.” Regina looked up at him and smiled.

“What’s that?” Henry had never come across regular skating before never mind on ice. It looked fun though. 

There were a few people there on the frozen pond, skating merrily back and forth, laughing and joking with one another. Some other parents were there, taking their children for their first lesson of ice skating…for the twenty first time, their breath clouding in the air about them. 

Fairy lights had been strung amongst the trees giving the place an admittedly magical appearance. 

“It’s good exercise.” 

“It’s fun.” Graham corrected her.

“I like the fun part. Can we just do that?” Henry tilted so he could look down at Graham. 

“’Course we can.” Graham smirked at Regina. “Open the sack, love.” 

“More presents?” Regina asked archly, knowing fine and well what was in the sack now that she had a giant frozen clue in front of her. 

True enough, Regina pulled free three sets of ice skates and she couldn’t help but smile. They were monogrammed. Of course they were. 

“Oooooh.” Henry bounced up and down when he recognised his name on the side of a red skate. “They’re for me!”

“Yes, yes they are.” Graham lifted Henry from his shoulders and set him down onto the ground before he was kicked repeatedly in the chest by Henry’s bouncing. “Come on and we’ll go closer to the pond and put them on, yeah?” 

“Yeah!” Henry crowed and took off at a dead run for the pond, only slithering to a halt when Regina called to him and warned him not to dash out onto the ice. 

He hopped impatiently from foot to foot and Graham hoisted him up onto a bench and helped him out of his red wellingtons to replace them with equally red skates. Red was the in thing this year, didn’t you know.

Regina sat too and put on her skates at a more sedate pace. They had done this before, when it was only Graham and her. in the middle of the night with only the fairy lights as illumination to the hiss of their skates over the ice and her laugh whenever he took the time to pull her close and kiss her, usually causing them to nearly fall every single time. 

But he always took the chance to do it anyway. 

“Oh, that’s weird.” Henry was helped down to stand on the bank of the pond in his little skates and he frowned at suddenly being three inches taller. 

Regina rose to her full height, more than used to being three inches taller than she should be and took a couple of steps in her skates until she could glide fluidly onto the ice. She skated around in a little half circle and turned back to Henry. 

“Want to try?” She smiled at him. 

“Uh-huh!” Henry started to bounce eagerly, his favourite pastime it would seem, but stopped himself when his skates shifted uncertainly beneath him. He pondered that for a moment and then held his hands out to her. “Help me, mommy, please.” 

Regina smirked and skated back to the bank, reaching over and helping him onto the ice. His eyes went comically wide when his skates immediately slipped out from under him and it was only Regina that saved him from landing on his rump. She laughed, holding him up and helped him get his feet under him, then she slowly started backwards, pulling him along with her. 

“You can go backwards?!” Henry stared wide eyed up at her and she laughed again. 

“It takes a lot of practice.” Regina grinned for him, going slowly around the edge of the pond, letting him get used to the feel of the skates beneath him. 

“How do I do it?” Henry looked down at his feet as he was pulled along.

“Go backwards?” 

“I think we should start with forwards, mommy.” Henry admonished her lightly and she laughed again. 

“Alright.” Regina let go of one of his hands and peeled into a tight spinning turn so that she stood beside him rather in front of him. “You’ve got to turn your foot at an angle, like this.” Regina showed him and Henry looked at her feet and then down at his own. He mimicked her well enough. “Then give a little push, like this.” 

Regina let go of his hand and pushed off into a smooth glide a few feet away. She turned, intending to go back to him, but Henry gave a hearty shove with his angled foot and went sliding forward faster than he had intended. 

His reasoning being that he had smaller legs than his mommy and therefore had to shove harder. 

Shoving harder, however, succeeded in doing nothing more than making him careen out of control and land on his front on the ice. 

“Henry!” Regina hurried to his side, sliding around in front of him to look down at his little face, convinced he’d cracked his chin off the ice. 

Henry lay there and then pushed himself up with his arms so he could see her. The bell of his hat bouncing off his little nose. He looked at her a long moment, absorbing what had happened, deciding what to do. 

Then he burst out laughing. 

“Again!” Henry giggled and laughed madly, trying to scramble to his feet. “Again and again!”

“The idea is to stay upright.” Graham slid to a halt at their side and easily lifted Henry back onto his feet.

“Nope!” Henry hurled himself forward, having learned how to push off and that was all he needed as far as he was concerned, and hurled himself down onto his front to glide over the ice on  his padded jacket, cackling like a mad thing the whole time. 

Regina frowned after him.   
“

Why _does_ he do that?” She murmured. 

“He doesn’t seem to mind.” Graham cautiously laced his gloved fingers through hers and was heartened when she didn’t pull away. “At least we know he can take a fall and isn’t afraid to try again.” 

“He’s not supposed to want to try the falling part again.” She frowned after Henry. Her little boy was just so _odd_ sometimes. 

At least he was never boring. 

Henry wobbled to his feet and pushed off again, though his skate skittered over the ice at the wrong angle so he automatically pushed again and –with that- realised he could go much faster and further if he kicked off multiple times. 

It was the third such incidence of pushing off several times that he realised, if he stayed upright, he could go faster even than that. 

So he went, one leg straight beneath him, twisting the skate this way and that to steer and the other kicking madly to propel him forward. He didn’t bother himself to learn how to stop. Why would he want to? Besides, if he really needed to, he’d just skate around to mommy or Graham and crash into them. 

That would stop him. 

“Well, he’s got the spirit of it if not the technique.” Regina tilted her head as she watched Henry zip around at a fair speed. 

“Go with what works, right?” Graham gave her a little tug with his hand and she moved along beside him seemingly out of habit, keeping an eye on Henry as she did. 

“I do like how he’s always game to try new things thought the lack of fear can be alarming in and of itself.” 

“Ah, that’s because you’re always there to save him.” Graham smiled down at her. “Nobody messes with mama bear’s cub, hmm?” 

“I thought he was the Big Bad Wolf’s cub?” Regina looked up at him with a smirk, remembering how they had both chased after her in the park yesterday and she faltered when she realised what she had just said. 

“Would that he could be.” Graham gave her a different kind of smile but didn’t let her fall into a panic at the thought of him becoming a more permanent fixture in Henry’s life.

He slid around in front of her, skating backwards himself and grinned at her.

“Still tired?”

Regina, skating very close to him, so close that they had to skate in tandem, his leg moving backwards as hers slid forward, tilted her head in silent question. 

“I only ask as this used to be quite a…vigorous pastime for us.” 

Regina smirked. 

Meaning, she’d ridden him on _that_ bench right over there under the twinkling lights in the dead of night with their breath clouding above them and their skin steaming. 

“I think it’s a little crowded for that.” Regina was aware of the crowds around them but paid them no heed. 

“Spoilsport.” Graham grinned at her. “Did you miss me this morning?” 

“Your absence was noted.” 

“Ah, but was it…felt?” 

“Mm-hmm.” Regina bit her lower lip and nodded, her voice low and throaty. Her eyes became hooded and she considered kissing him then and there. 

They might fall but…hell, wasn’t she falling already?

“Mommy! Graham! Look!”

Regina and Graham, reluctantly pulled from their flirting, slowed to a halt and turned to see Henry standing right in the middle of the pond. 

“What is it, lad?” Graham started over to the boy and Regina followed at a more sedate pace. 

It was becoming one of her favourite things to see. Henry and Graham together. Playing and laughing or sitting side by side in a diner booth or sprawled fast asleep on the couch whilst the television played forgotten in the background.

“Spider webs!” Henry pointed down at his feet. “Look, in the ice, spider webs!”

Regina frowned, not understanding what he meant, but Graham caught on just that second sooner and the most terrifying sound to be heard whilst standing on ice rang out like a gunshot. 

_Cra-ack!_

Graham didn’t hesitate. He snatched Henry up by the scruff of his jacket and hurled him across the ice towards Regina. Henry slithered on his front, yelling in surprise, and was promptly hauled up off the ice by his mother. 

“GET OFF THE ICE!” Graham roared at Regina and everyone, another crack sending a white line and a blurt of water over the ice. “GET OFF THE ICE NOW!”

Graham kicked off to follow Regina towards the safety of the bank but the ice was too thin. It shattered beneath him like a windowpane and he had time only to suck in a breath before anything solid beneath him was just gone and he plunged down into the water. 

Graham was caught completely unawares and dropped like a stone, he managed to clap his hands over the edge of the ice to keep from being dragged to the bottom of the pond by his skates but the frigid water hitting the back of his neck was like being caught by a beer bottle in a bar brawl. All of the air coughed from his lungs in reflex, every muscle in his body contracted as if he had been electrified and he was going to have to invent a whole new world for how _cold_ it was. 

Graham fought frantically, scrambling at the ice, trying to keep his head above water because he didn’t think he’d survive if he didn’t. His legs kicked, leaden and heavy, already going numb. He felt like his chest wasn’t expanding fully because his body was trying to shiver too hard already and every time he grasped the edge of the ice it snapped away uselessly. 

He was really beginning to think that this might not turn out so well for him when Regina was suddenly there. 

“I’ve got you!” She slid over the ice on her front, her arms plunging into the water under his and hauling him up to keep his head above the water. 

“What are ye doin’, idiot woman?!” Graham’s teeth clattered. “I’ll pull ye in!”

“No, you won’t.” She was attempting to be calm but her teeth had already begun to chatter. “I’m spreading your weight out over a wider area. The ice won’t break that way.”

“No, it’ll break right out from under you and then we’re both in trouble!” Graham tried to get out of the ice, again and again, trying to push her back towards shore. “Go! Get to the bank where it’s safe.” 

“I’m not going anywhere.” Her teeth where gritted and she gasped in surprise when a plate of ice cracked beneath her and dunked her into the water with him, her chin coming down on his shoulder, her voice quiet and hoarse in his ear. “I’m not leaving you.”

“We’re both going to drown if you don’t.” Graham shoved at her, sinking deeper into the water, pushing her back up onto the ice. 

Regina fisted her hands in his jacket and yelled with the effort of pulling herself backwards and him up onto the ice. 

“NO!” Her teeth were bared and her eyes flashed in the denial of what was going on. She would not stand for it. “Nobody’s drowning today, least of all you, now _move_!”

Graham tried, he really tried, because she was going to get pulled in if he didn’t, because he might drown if he didn’t, because they both might freeze if he didn’t, but he mostly failed. 

His legs kicked sluggishly, blood flow slowing to them, his extremities had gone numb, the terror was making his jittery shivering even worse. He couldn’t feel anything but white hot pain from every angle, he didn’t know if what his frightened mind was telling his brain to do was getting through to any of his muscles but he _tried_. 

And so did she.

Regina hauled at his jacket and shirt, teeth bared in effort, scrambling backwards over the ice and pulling him with her.

It cracked again and she yelled in shock when she fell shoulder deep into the water with him. 

“I can’t get out. Let me go.” Graham’s jaw was a line of granite, his lips turned blue. “Let me go.” 

Regina looked at him for a long moment and shook her head minutely.

“We’ll both drown. You can’t leave Henry.” 

Regina’s fear melted away at the mention of her son. Her jaw clenched and her hands tightened on his jacket. Leaning down, even deeper into the water, she grasped at his belt with numb fingers. 

“I’m. Not. Going.” She gritted and _pulled_.

Graham yelped when she snarled with the effort of lifting her own weight and his. The ice crackled alarmingly beneath them but she didn’t care. She sat back, pulling him up onto the ice, swung her leg around and stabbed the heel of her skate into the ice and pushed with her leg as she pulled with her arms. The story of how the five four Mayor lifted a soaking wet six two Sheriff out of the water would be told often in the coming weeks and months, long after the curse should have wiped it from the locals’ memories. 

Graham finally got it, she wasn’t going. Not without him. Not for any reason. He had to get out of the water and to safety or she wouldn’t. 

Nuff said. 

Graham kicked, his teeth gritted and his hands clawing into the ice. His fingers raked furrows into the ice until he found purchase and he scrambled madly to follow her. It was far from dignified or graceful but he was up and on the ice rather than beneath it. 

“Here!”

Something skittered over the ice towards them and Graham snatched blindly for it, relying on his eyes to tell him that his hand had in fact closed tightly around the lifebelt. It was kept at the side of the pond during the summer months when people swam. 

Graham didn’t care where it had come from, only where it was going. He wrapped one arm around Regina and hooked the other through the lifebelt and he kicked with his legs, pushing them towards the bank as the same time as the people at the other end of the lifebelt hauled on the rope.

Graham collapsed onto the bank as soon as he felt solid ground beneath him and lay panting, shivering convulsively. Many hands gripped him under the arms and fisted in his jacket. He was hauled further onto the embankment and rolled enthusiastically in the snow. Then he was stripped of his coat and his waist coat and shirt and bundled into someone else’s jacket. 

He was dimly aware of Henry crying and Regina shushing him having removed her own sweater now being wrapped in another’s coat around her and Henry both. 

Things popped in and out of focus and details were blurry but one thing remained in perfect clarity. 

Regina hadn’t left him and she never would.


End file.
